A New Mexico state court has ordered Meta to pay $567 million and overhaul safety features for young users after finding the social media company responsible for harming children’s mental health. The ruling marks one of the largest legal actions against a social media platform over child safety and is expected to influence similar lawsuits across the United States.Judge Bryan Biedscheid ruled that Meta had created a public nuisance in New Mexico, siding with Attorney General Raúl Torrez, who accused the company of designing Facebook and Instagram to keep young users addicted while failing to protect children from sexual exploitation. The court directed Meta to implement a series of youth safety measures for the next five years, including monthly usage limits for teenagers, restrictions on notifications, tighter controls on adult contact with minors, safeguards for AI chatbots and enhanced review of child sexual abuse reports.The financial penalty will fund programmes aimed at addressing the impact of social media on children. According to the court, $420 million will be allocated to treatment services for young people, while the remaining amount will support awareness campaigns, prevention initiatives, screening services and other related costs over the next five years.Meta said it would appeal the ruling, maintaining that it has continued to strengthen protections for young users and remove harmful content from its platforms.“We remain confident in our record of protecting teens online and will continue to defend ourselves against claims that misrepresent the facts,” Meta said in a statement.The ruling follows the first phase of New Mexico’s lawsuit, in which a jury in March found that Meta violated the state’s consumer protection law by misrepresenting the safety of Facebook and Instagram for young users. Jurors had imposed $375 million in civil penalties, concluding that the company knowingly harmed children’s mental health and concealed what it knew about child sexual exploitation on its platforms.The second phase of the trial, heard without a jury over three weeks, focused on whether Meta’s platforms constituted a public nuisance under New Mexico law. Prosecutors sought sweeping changes to the company’s products, including curbing addictive features, improving age verification and strengthening default privacy settings to better protect children.However, the court declined to require mandatory age verification for children under 13, noting that the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) prevents platforms from collecting additional personal information or passively tracking children for that purpose. The judge also said imposing such a requirement only on Meta, and not on other social media companies, would be “inequitable and unduly injurious” to the company.The case is being closely watched as states, municipalities and school districts across the United States pursue similar lawsuits seeking industry-wide changes to how social media platforms protect children online.
