Grassley, Blackburn, Hawley Demand Answers on Meta’s Emotional Targeting of Children, Repeated Alleged Failures to Comply with Child Privacy Law

WASHINGTON – Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and committee members Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) are demanding answers from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg following new disclosures outlining the company’s efforts to target teenagers based on their emotional state and Meta’s reported failure to comply with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).

In April, Grassley sent a letter to Zuckerberg on the company’s alleged emotional targeting, and he also made public text messages between then-Facebook employees regarding those allegations.

“To date, Meta has failed to fully and completely respond to Senator Grassley’s letter, but it has not questioned the accuracy of the records he made public … Meta’s failures to protect teens from exploitation on its platforms is not isolated to targeted advertisements,” the senators said.

In their letter, the senators cite a draft presentation that describes a 2014 Facebook study analyzing the emotional behavior of 13- to 24-year-olds on social media, including what emotional triggers drive the spread of brand-based content.

The senators expressed additional concerns regarding Meta’s failure to protect children online, including failure to comply with COPPA. According to a Federal Trade Commission complaint against Meta, the company allegedly allowed children under the age of 13 to register with adult accounts for the Horizon Worlds VR platform. Then, Meta allegedly chose to move forward with plans to expand the platform to children as young as 10 without instituting appropriate safety measures to ensure child accounts required parental consent for data collection. It also alleges Meta has collected “vast amounts of personal information from children under 13 without parental consent,” which is in violation of COPPA.

“The complaint alleges that, as a result, Meta has unlawfully collected data on children and exposed children to ‘racism, sexual harassment, bullying, and child endangerment.’ If Meta disagrees with these publicly filed assertions, we welcome an explanation,” the senators continued.

Text of the letter can be found HERE or below:

September 2, 2025

VIA ELECTRONIC TRANSMISSION

Mr. Mark Zuckerberg

Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Meta Platforms, Inc.

Dear Mr. Zuckerberg:

On April 16, 2025, Chairman Grassley sent a letter to Meta regarding its alleged use of targeted advertisements to children based on their emotional state.¹ Chairman Grassley also made text messages between then-Facebook employees public regarding those allegations. In that letter, Chairman Grassley asked about the veracity of the text messages and for records relating to targeted advertisements towards children, among other items.² To date, Meta has failed to fully and completely respond to Chairman Grassley’s letter, but it has not questioned the accuracy of the records he made public.

As part of his office’s follow up, his staff requested responsive records.³ On July 11, 2025, Meta provided publicly available “Research Decks” about Instagram’s effects on teenage girls; however, this was not responsive to his questions, as Chairman Grassley asked for all research Meta, then-Facebook, conducted regarding targeting ads and teenage emotional states.⁴ Additionally, Meta directed his staff to its updated policy regarding “new targeting segment requests,” that came in response to a 2017 Australian article, which Chairman Grassley referenced in his April 16, 2025, letter.⁵

Although Meta failed to comply with Chairman Grassley’s oversight requests, his office has nonetheless obtained additional documents from other sources. These documents are responsive to the issues at the heart of his April 16 letter regarding targeted ads, so it is puzzling why Meta could not simply transmit these records to Chairman Grassley.

Specifically, Chairman Grassley’s office has obtained a draft PowerPoint that describes a 2014 study conducted by Facebook entitled Global Youth Study – Overview of Findings. In the study, Facebook analyzed the emotional behavior of 1,000 respondents aged 13 to 24 years old to determine how they respond to social media, whether they share branded material with peers, and what emotional triggers drive the spread of brand-based content.⁶ According to slide 170, the audience of the Global Youth Study is “influencers, agencies, brands, sales, other industry, and customers.”⁷ This new information appears to contradict Facebook’s 2017 statement that it “does not offer tools to target people based on their emotional state.” ⁸

However, Meta’s failures to protect teens from exploitation on its platforms is not isolated to targeted advertisements. According to reporting from 2021, consultant Arturo Bejar emailed you, Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, Chief Product Officer Chris Cox, and Instagram lead Adam Mosseri, highlighting the research he conducted on how teens and children were treated on Instagram.⁹ According to Bejar, “51% of Instagram users say they’ve had a ‘bad or harmful experience’ on the app within the previous week. And of those users who report harmful posts, only 2% have that content taken down. For teens, 21% said they’d been the target of bullying and 24% received unwanted sexual advances.”¹⁰

Further, according to an April 10, 2025, Federal Trade Commission (FTC) complaint filed against Meta, the company allegedly allowed children under the age of 13 to register with adult accounts for the Horizon Worlds VR platform and failed to take appropriate measures to ensure compliance with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).¹¹ Specifically, the FTC complaint alleges that Meta has collected “vast amounts of personal information from children under 13 without parental consent,” in violation of COPPA.¹² Even more concerning, Meta allegedly chose to move forward with plans to expand the Horizon Worlds platform to children as young as 10 without instituting appropriate safety measures to ensure child accounts required parental consent for data collection.¹³ The complaint alleges that, as a result, Meta has unlawfully collected data on children and exposed children to “racism, sexual harassment, bullying, and child endangerment.”¹⁴ If Meta disagrees with these publicly filed assertions, we welcome an explanation.

Even more recent, on August 14, 2025, reports surfaced stating that Meta’s artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots “engage[ed] a child in conversations that are romantic or sensual.”¹⁵ Reports also indicate that “Meta’s AI chatbots flirt or engage in sexual roleplay with teenagers.”¹⁶

So that Congress may conduct objective and independent oversight of Meta’s use of targeted ads and children’s safety on its platforms, please provide answers to the following no later than September 16, 2025:

1. Provide a full and complete response, including all responsive records, to Chairman Grassley’s April 16, 2025, letter.¹⁷
2. Is the 2014 Global Youth Study slide deck accurate? Please provide a final version if the draft provided to my office isn’t a final version.
3. What steps has Meta taken to ensure compliance with COPPA’s requirements for data collection on children? Provide all records.
4. How many users under the age of 18 use the Horizon World’s platform?
5. What safeguards does Meta have in place to ensure that teenagers, and those who are younger, are not being bullied, sexually harassed, or providing personal information to adults?
6. What age restrictions does Meta currently have in place on its Horizon World’s platform?
7. What steps has Meta taken to protect children who use Horizon World or its other virtual reality platforms from sexual exploitation?
8. Provide all records related to Meta’s deployment of generative AI, including all internal policies, standards, and protections governing the use of these models.