New Mexico Court Orders Meta to Pay $567M in Youth Safety Case

A New Mexico state court judge has ordered Meta to pay $567 million and impose sweeping restrictions on how minors use Facebook and Instagram, escalating legal pressure on the social media giant over platform harms to children. Santa Fe-based Judge Bryan Biedscheid ruled that Meta is a "public nuisance" and a "significant contributing factor to the current mental health crisis among New Mexico's youth," citing substantial evidence of mental health harms linked to its platforms.

Of the total award, $420 million will fund treatment programs for New Mexico minors harmed on the platforms, while the remainder supports public awareness campaigns and prevention efforts. The judge also imposed operational mandates: Meta must disable push notifications for New Mexico youth between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m., cap monthly usage at 90 hours for minor accounts, and display child safety information on dedicated awareness screens. A Meta spokesperson said the company disagrees with the ruling and plans to appeal, asserting it has been "transparent about the challenges" and confident in its track record of protecting teens online.

The ruling is a bellwether in a wave of state-level litigation targeting Meta. In March, a jury in the same New Mexico case hit Meta with a separate $375 million fine for deceiving users about Instagram and Facebook safety and facilitating the sexual exploitation of minors. Separately, a California jury found Meta and YouTube liable for a young girl's social media addiction, awarding her $6 million, and Meta faces at least 1,200 additional lawsuits from school districts. In May, the company settled with a Kentucky district seeking mental health and academic intervention funding. With regulators and courts increasingly scrutinizing platform defaults, parents and guardians concerned about data exposure can run a privacy checkup to audit what their browsers and accounts reveal, and a browser fingerprint test to see how identifiable their devices are to trackers embedded in social media sites. Strengthening account credentials with a password checker adds another layer of defense against unauthorized access, particularly important for shared family devices where minor accounts remain active.