In a landmark ruling that adds to growing legal pressure on social media platforms over youth safety, a New Mexico judge has ordered tech giant Meta to pay $567 million in penalties and remediation funds to resolve claims that the company created a public nuisance and inflicted widespread harm on children across the state. The decision marks a major escalation of a legal battle that first reached a jury verdict earlier this year, and it sets a clear precedent for dozens of similar pending cases against the company across the United States.
The case dates back to 2023, when New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez filed a lawsuit against Meta, the parent company of major platforms Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, accusing the firm of systemic failures to protect minor users from a range of online dangers. In March 2025, a jury already found Meta liable for endangering children, including leaving young users vulnerable to predation, and awarded $375 million in damages to the state. Thursday’s ruling finalizes additional penalties and outlines required changes to Meta’s platform operations in the state.
Prosecutors argued during the trial that Meta’s recommendation algorithms actively steered adult users toward content posted by teenage users, while the company intentionally suppressed internal research that documented significant mental health and safety risks that its platforms posed to young people. The jury ultimately agreed that Meta violated New Mexico’s Unfair Practices Act by misleading consumers about the child safety standards of its products.
Under the terms of the new ruling, roughly three-quarters of the $567 million payment will be allocated to fund long-term mental health treatment for children harmed by Meta’s platforms, with the full amount paid out over a five-year period. The remaining quarter of the fund will be distributed across targeted programs: public awareness and harm prevention, youth mental health screening and assessment, care referral and coordination, and ongoing compliance implementation and evaluation.
Beyond financial penalties, the judge imposed sweeping operational changes on Meta for its New Mexico user base. The company is required to strengthen efforts to block users under the age of 13 from accessing Facebook and Instagram, a mandate that aligns with growing global regulatory momentum for age verification on social platforms, even as implementation of such policies remains technically and logistically complex.
In his written ruling, Judge Bryan Biedscheid emphasized that adolescent brains are uniquely susceptible to the addictive platform features designed to maximize user engagement, including infinite scrolling, autoplay video, public like counts, push notifications and algorithmic content recommendations. While the ruling acknowledged that many of these design choices represent industry-wide practices that intersect with complex free speech debates, it ordered Meta to implement targeted restrictions for users under 18 in New Mexico: limiting monthly platform usage to 90 hours (an average of three hours per day), capping push notifications, and hiding public like counts from minor user accounts. Meta will also be required to submit bi-annual compliance updates to the court to ensure the changes are being implemented.
In an immediate response to the ruling, Meta reiterated its intent to challenge the decision, saying, “We disagree with the ruling and will appeal.” The company added that it “works hard to keep people safe on our platforms and have been transparent about the challenges of identifying and removing bad actors and harmful content,” noting that it remains “confident in our record of protecting teens online and will continue to defend ourselves against claims that misrepresent the facts.”
For New Mexico officials, however, the ruling represents a long-awaited win for families. “This case has always been about protecting children, standing up for families, and making sure that one of the world’s largest technology companies cannot profit from practices that endanger young people without consequence,” Torrez said in a statement Thursday. “Today’s decision is a victory for every parent who has worried about what social media is doing to their child and every child who deserves to grow up safer online.”
The New Mexico ruling is part of a much broader wave of legal action against social media companies across the U.S. Thousands of individual and state-level lawsuits have been filed holding platforms liable for alleged youth mental health harms, with more than 30 states bringing similar cases against Meta. The next major bellwether trial is scheduled to begin in August in Oakland, California, which will set a key framework for resolving thousands of remaining pending claims across the country. Recent prior bellwether proceedings have produced mixed outcomes: a July 2025 trial against Meta ended when the teenage plaintiff dropped the case days before opening arguments, after reaching confidential settlements with other major platforms including TikTok, YouTube and Snap. The first bellwether trial concluded in March 2025, when a Los Angeles jury ordered Meta and Google to pay $6 million in damages to a 20-year-old woman who alleged social media addiction caused her lasting harm. In May, Meta, Snap, TikTok and YouTube reached confidential settlements with a Kentucky school district that had sued over youth social media harms.