Friday, August 7, 2026 - A New Mexico court has ordered Instagram and Facebook parent company Meta to pay $567 million to address harms to young people from its platforms in the second phase of a landmark trial.
Judge Bryan Biedscheid said in a ruling late
Thursday that the bulk of the money — $420 million — will be used for treatment
services for young people. The rest will go toward awareness and prevention,
screening services, and other costs over the next five years
The new penalty is in addition to the $375 million in civil
penalties that jurors ordered against Meta in March after determining the
company knowingly harmed children's mental health and concealed what it knew
about child sexual exploitation on its platforms. In the second phase,
prosecutors asked the judge to impose fundamental changes at Meta aimed at
reining in addictive features, improving age verification and preventing child
sexual exploitation through default privacy settings and closer oversight.
The ruling is another setback for Meta, which faces an
avalanche of lawsuits from thousands of families of children harmed by social
media.
New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez said it sends an
unmistakable message that companies will be held accountable when their product
designs knowingly put children at risk.
"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," he said in a statement.
Meta vowed to appeal.
"We work hard to keep people safe on our platforms and
have been transparent about the challenges of identifying and removing bad
actors and harmful content," the company said in a statement. "We
remain confident in our record of protecting teens online and will continue to
defend ourselves against claims that misrepresent the facts."
The judge ordered Facebook and Instagram to build banner and informational screens to clearly explain its protection features, best practices and tools to address inappropriate comments, for example, and display them regularly. Those changes and an educational campaign in New Mexico would be subject to review by the state.
The court said federal children's privacy laws prevent Meta from applying age-verification tools to children under 13. The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA, means it cannot order Meta to request children to submit personal data or be passively tracked online, even for age verification purposes.
The court also noted that ordering verification of
children's ages only for Meta and not other social media companies would be
"inequitable and unduly injurious" to the company.
Instead, the court ordered Meta to continue to improve its
age assurance tools in New Mexico, which include using artificial intelligence
to determine people's age based on signals such as who their friends are and
what types of content they post and consume. Meta must also attempt to develop
a dedicated "under-13-years-of-age prediction model" in the next two
years.
Additionally, Meta should also request proof of age for
Instagram and Facebook users in New Mexico it estimates to be under 13. If it
determines a user to be under 13, or under 18 but without being able to
estimate a specific age, Meta must treat the user as under 13 or under 18 until
the user verifies their age.
The company must also partner with schools or a child safety
organization to create a reporting portal where school staff can flag users who
may be under 13. And it must delete personal information it has collected on
users under 13. The court also ordered Meta to report on its progress twice a
year on how it's complying with the abatement measures.
Meta is also gearing up for a trial this month in California
amid a flood of lawsuits
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