The Social Reckoning , Aaron Sorkin’s companion piece to The Social Network , starring Mikey Madison and Jeremy Allen White opened Friday to $2.15 million in its opening day across 2,606 theaters.

The film is inspired by true events and whistleblower Frances Haugen, the former Facebook product manager who sent internal Facebook documents to The Wall Street Journal .

After Haugen came forward, The Wall Street Journal published a 17-article series in 2021 called “The Facebook Files,” reporting that “Facebook Inc. knows, in acute detail, that its platforms are riddled with flaws that cause harm, often in ways only the company fully understands.”

The film ends with Haugen testifying before Congress in 2021. Since then, the legal system has responded unevenly, and the structural problems Haugen documented are still largely unresolved.

What ‘The Facebook Files’ Revealed

From September 13 to December 29, 2021, The Wall Street Journal published a 17-article series known as “ The Facebook Files ,” based on a review of internal Facebook documents including research reports, online employee discussions and drafts of presentations to senior management.

Findings by The Wall Street Journal include:

  • Facebook knew from research “that Instagram is harmful for a sizable percentage” of young users, including “teenage girls,” even though “Facebook has consistently played down the app’s negative effects, including in comments to Congress, and hasn’t made its research public or available to academics or lawmakers who have asked for it.”
  • Facebook had “teams of employees” who “have for years been laying plans to attract preteens that go beyond what is publicly known, spurred by fear that it could lose a wave of users critical to its future.”
  • Facebook “made a heralded change to its algorithm in 2018 designed to improve its platform”—but the change “was making Facebook, and those who used it, angrier.”

The Wall Street Journal reported that the documents offered “perhaps the clearest picture thus far of how broadly Facebook’s problems are known inside the company, up to the chief executive himself.”

On October 5, 2021, Haugen testified before the U.S. Senate. She called on Congress to regulate Facebook, arguing the company’s own internal research showed it was prioritizing profit over user safety, and that it would not fix the problems on its own. The testimony drew bipartisan attention and put “The Facebook Files” directly in front of lawmakers.

On October 28, 2021—three weeks after Haugen testified and six weeks after the first Facebook Files article—Facebook rebranded as Meta.

Legislation After ‘The Facebook Files’

In 2024, Congress passed the Kids Online Safety Act , requiring platforms to take “reasonable measures in the design and operation of products or services used by minors to prevent and mitigate certain harms that may arise from that use,” including harms like “sexual exploitation and online bullying.”

It was among the most direct legislative responses to what “The Facebook Files” revealed about teen safety.

But no law addressed the algorithmic amplification issues The Wall Street Journal exposed. That gap between what the documents showed and what Congress was willing or able to legislate has never closed.

Lawsuits On Behalf Of Harmed Children

“The Facebook Files” documents became the evidentiary backbone for more than 2,400 personal injury cases alleging that Meta, TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube were deliberately designed to addict children and adolescents, causing anxiety, depression, eating disorders, self-harm and in some cases death. Meta, TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube deny any wrongdoing.

The first case to reach a jury concluded in March 2026. The jury found Meta (for Instagram) and Google (for YouTube) liable for negligently designing platform features that harmed the minor plaintiff, and found that both companies had acted with malice, oppression or fraud.

Meta was ordered to pay $4.2 million, and Google was ordered to pay $1.8 million. Two other defendants, Snap Inc. and TikTok, reached confidential settlements before trial.

That case succeeded in part because the focus was on product design rather than content. By arguing that the platform features themselves were defective, the plaintiff found a path around Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which generally shields platforms from liability for third-party content.

In addition to those cases, 29 state attorneys general filed a complaint against Meta in October 2023, alleging in part that Meta used Facebook and Instagram to entice, engage and ultimately ensnare youth and teens. Several additional states and territories joined the lawsuit. Meta disputed the claims and asserted that its actions were reasonable and lawful.

In August 2026, Meta agreed to pay $18 billion to settle that lawsuit. The deal requires Meta to implement daily time limits for teen users, nighttime blocks, school-hour restrictions and other platform changes.

Radicalization And The Limits Of The Law

Beyond teen safety, “The Facebook Files” documented a platform that knew its algorithm was amplifying divisive content and chose engagement over fixes. No lawsuit has successfully addressed those findings.

The teen safety cases found a path around Section 230 by arguing the algorithm itself was a defective product, not the content it amplified. That framing worked because it targeted how the platform was built, not what it hosted.

Radicalization cases have not found the same path. In M.P. v. Meta Platforms , the family of a victim of the 2015 Charleston church shooting alleged Facebook radicalized the shooter. The Fourth Circuit affirmed Section 230 immunity for Meta in February 2025, and the Supreme Court declined to hear the case.

At their core, radicalization claims ask courts to hold Meta liable for amplifying and failing to remove user-generated content, which is exactly what Section 230 protects.

The congressional response was similarly limited. The January 6th Select Committee subpoenaed Meta for documents in early 2022, and Meta produced them. No legislation directly resulted.

The legal and legislative framework was not built to reach the divisive content issue that “The Facebook Files” exposed.

Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Social Reckoning is a powerful film about a courageous act. What it cannot fully show is that the act produced uneven results. The teen safety lawsuits and the $18 billion settlement are the clearest evidence that “The Facebook Files” produced legal accountability.

The findings about Facebook’s algorithm produced far less because the law was not built to reach them. The structural issues Haugen documented—the algorithm that rewards anger, the platform that knew and didn’t fix it—are still largely unresolved.

Five years later, that is the most honest answer to the question everyone leaving the theater is asking.