# Meta Study Reveals Parental Controls Fail

**Podcast:** TechCrunch Daily Crunch
**Published:** 2026-02-18

## Transcript

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Meta's own research found parental supervision doesn't really help curb teens' compulsive social media use.
I'm Imran Sheikh, and this is the TechCrunch Daily Crunch Special.
An internal research study at Meta dubbed Project Mist, spelled M Y S T, created in partnership with the University of Chicago.
Found that parental supervision and controls, such as time limits and restricted access, had little impact on kids' compulsive use of social media.
You see, the study also found that kids who experience stressful life events were more likely to lack the ability to moderate their social media use appropriately.
Now, this was one of the notable claims revealed during testimony at the social media addiction trial that began last week in Los Angeles County Superior Court.
The plaintiff there in the lawsuit is identified by her initials KGM, or her first name, Kaylee.
Cayley, along with her mother and others joining the case, is accusing social media companies of creating addictive and dangerous products that led young users to suffer anxiety, depression, body dysmorphia, eating disorders, self-harm, suicidal ideation, and could prompt regulators to take further action.
Now, in this case, the plaintiff sued Meta, YouTube, BikeDance, TikTok, and Snap, but the latter two companies had settled their claims before their trials start.
In the jury trial now underway in LA, Cayley's lawyer, Mark Lanier, brought up an internal study at Meta, which he said found evidence that Meta knew of, yet didn't publicize these specific harms.
Well, in Project MIST, which stands for the Meta and Youth Social Emotional Trends Survey, Meta's research concluded that parental and household factors have little association with teens' reported levels of attentiveness to their social media use.
Or, in other words, even when parents try to control their children's social media use, either by using parental controls or even just household rules and supervision, it doesn't impact whether or not the child will overuse social media or use it compulsively.
The study was based on a survey of 1,000 teens and their parents about their social media use.
The study also noted that both parents and teens agreed on this front, saying there's no association between either parental reports or teen reports of parental supervision and teen survey measures of attentiveness or capability.
If the study's findings are accurate, that'd mean that the use of things like the built-in parental controls in the Instagram app or the time limits on smartphones wouldn't necessarily help teens become less inclined to overuse social media, the plaintiff's lawyer argued.
As the original complaint alleges, teens are being exploited by social media products whose defects include algorithmic feeds designed to keep users scrolling, intermittent variable rewards that manipulate dopamine delivery, incessant notifications, deficient tools for parental controls, and more.
For his part, during his testimony, Instagram head Adam Masari claimed not to be familiar with Meta's Project MIST, even though a document seemed to indicate he had given his approval to move forward with the study.
We do a lot of research projects, Massari said, after claiming he couldn't remember anything specific about Mist beyond its name.
However, the plaintiff's lawyer pointed to this study as an example of why social media companies should be held accountable for their alleged harms, not the parents.
He noted that Kaylee's mother, for example, had tried to stop her daughter's social media addiction and use, even taking her phone away at times.
Well, what's more, the study found that teens who had a greater number of adverse life experiences, like those dealing with alcoholic parents, harassment at school, or other issues, reported less attentiveness over their social media use.
That means that kids facing trauma in their real lives were more at risk of addiction, the lawyer argued.
On the stand, Maseri seemed to partially agree with this finding, saying, there's a variety of reasons this can be the case.
One I've heard often is that people use Instagram as a way to escape from a more difficult reality.
Meta's careful not to label any sort of overuse as addiction.
Instead, Musseri stated that the company uses the term problematic use to refer to someone spending more time on Instagram than they feel good about.
Lawyers for Meta, meanwhile, pushed the idea that the study was more narrowly focused on understanding if teens felt they were using social media too much, not whether or not they were actually addicted.
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