Court Orders Meta to Pay $567M Over Kids’ Mental Health Harms

A New Mexico state court has ordered Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, to pay $567 million to address harms to young people from its platforms, in what legal experts are calling a landmark ruling that could reshape how social media companies operate for minors. Judge Bryan Biedscheid of the State District Court in Santa Fe issued the ruling late Thursday, finding that Meta created a “public nuisance” — the first time a social media company has been deemed as such in a US court.

According to AP News, the bulk of the money — $420 million, or approximately 74% — will be used for treatment services for young people. The remaining amount will go toward awareness and prevention, screening and assessment, referral and coordination, implementation, and evaluation over the next five years.

The new penalty comes on top of the $375 million in civil penalties a jury ordered against Meta in March 2026 after determining the company knowingly harmed children’s mental health and concealed what it knew about child sexual exploitation on its platforms. Combined, Meta’s total liability in this case now stands at $942 million.

A Landmark ‘Public Nuisance’ Finding

Judge Biedscheid’s ruling marks a significant legal milestone. As BBC News reported, this appears to be the first time a social media company has been deemed a public nuisance — an issue of health and safety so widespread it negatively impacts the general public.

The judge drew a striking analogy, comparing Meta’s operations to a factory where advertising and content are the products and “the psychological harm and sexual exploitation of children to be the pollution that must be abated.” He said these effects “migrate to the internet as a whole and, perhaps most concerning, to the real world,” creating “a common, societal burden on and harm to the affected children and their families,” as well as schools, hospitals, and law enforcement.

“Significant numbers of people in New Mexico experience harm from Meta’s products due to risks of sexual exploitation, interference with education, and adverse mental health outcomes,” the judge wrote in his ruling, as TechCrunch reported. Although he acknowledged Meta is not alone in this regard, he found its platforms are “a significant contributing factor to the current mental health crisis among New Mexico’s youth.”

Court-Ordered Operational Changes

Beyond the financial penalty, the judge ordered sweeping operational changes to how Meta’s platforms function for young users in New Mexico. These include removing Like counts for users under 18, pausing push notifications between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. and during school hours on school days, and limiting usage to 90 cumulative hours per month — roughly three hours per day.

The court also ordered that no account of a user under age 18 should be recommended to an adult, that no adult should be able to message an underage user, and that underage users must be banned from sending or receiving nudity. A “1-strike policy” for adult users who engage in child sexual exploitation was also mandated.

As The Guardian detailed, Meta must also build banner and informational screens to clearly explain its protection features and tools, improve its age assurance tools using artificial intelligence, and attempt to develop a dedicated “under-13-years-of-age prediction model” within the next two years. The company must partner with schools or a child safety organization to create a reporting portal for flagging users who may be under 13, and must delete personal information it has collected on users under 13.

The court acknowledged that federal children’s privacy laws (COPPA) prevent Meta from applying age-verification tools to children under 13, and noted that ordering verification only for Meta and not other social media companies would be “inequitable and unduly injurious” to the company.

Reactions to the Ruling

New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez, who filed the lawsuit in 2023, hailed the decision. “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,” he said in a statement, as Al Jazeera reported.

“For years, Meta knew its platforms were harming New Mexico’s kids, from feeding a youth mental health crisis to connecting predators with children, and it chose engagement and profit over their safety,” Torrez added. “Today, Meta is paying for that choice.”

Meta, however, vowed to appeal. “We disagree with the ruling and will appeal,” the company said in a statement, as Euronews reported. “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. We remain confident in our record of protecting teens online and will continue to defend ourselves against claims that misrepresent the facts.”

A Broader Legal Storm

The New Mexico ruling comes amid an avalanche of legal challenges facing Meta. As AP News reported, the families of four teenagers who died by suicide sued Meta, TikTok, Snap, and Google’s YouTube in late July, describing “years of escalating harms” from using their platforms. Meta also faces thousands of lawsuits from families of children harmed by social media.

Meta is scheduled to face a trial later this month in federal court in Oakland, California, in a multi-district lawsuit filed by 33 states’ attorneys general who sued the company in 2023 for contributing to the youth mental health crisis by knowingly designing addictive features. Eight states, including Tennessee where a trial is currently ongoing, filed lawsuits in their own state courts.

The company has already appealed a landmark jury verdict from a Los Angeles trial that found it liable for building addictive platforms. In March, a jury there awarded $6 million in damages to a 20-year-old woman who said she became addicted to social media as a child.

Analysis: A Potential Turning Point

Legal experts suggest the New Mexico ruling could have implications far beyond the state’s borders. Laura Edelson, an assistant professor at Northeastern University focusing on social media and cybersecurity, called it “the first of many dominoes that will fall for Meta.”

“America is not going to pass a law that bans social media,” Edelson said. “But if companies like Meta know they’re causing harm to users by product design, the states are finally finding a way to rein this in.”

Bruce Daisley, former European vice president of Twitter (now X), told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that while the fine is “a drop in the ocean” for Meta — whose annual profit was approximately $60 billion in 2025 — it signals a broader shift. “It’s an indication that we are moving to a stage where social media is going to be tackled around the world,” he said.

The international dimension is significant. The UK recently announced plans to block under-16s from social media, France has passed a social media ban for teenagers under 15, and the EU has told Meta to stop “addictive” features like infinite scroll. Former UK safeguarding minister Jess Phillips said US court challenges against big tech could enable the UK to take tougher action without fearing damage to UK-US diplomatic ties.

What’s Next

Meta’s appeal is expected to be a lengthy process, and the company’s stock barely moved in after-hours trading — dropping less than half a percent to $589.44 — suggesting investors view the financial penalty as manageable. However, the operational changes ordered by the court, combined with the growing wave of state and federal litigation, could have more significant long-term implications for how social media platforms operate for young users.

The upcoming trial in Oakland, California, later this month will be closely watched as the first of the multi-district state lawsuits to reach trial. With dozens of states, school districts, and thousands of families pursuing similar claims, the New Mexico ruling may prove to be a watershed moment in the ongoing battle over social media’s impact on children’s mental health.