A New Mexico court has directed Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, to pay $567 million to fund remedies for youth-related harms linked to its platforms, marking the second phase of a landmark case the tech giant lost in March.
In a ruling issued late Thursday, Judge Bryan Biedscheid said most of the award — $420 million — must be dedicated to treatment services for young people. The remaining funds will support public awareness and prevention efforts, screening services and related costs over the next five years.
The order follows the trial’s first phase, in which jurors imposed $375 million in civil penalties against Meta after finding the company knowingly damaged children’s mental health and hid what it knew about child sexual exploitation occurring on its platforms.
During the second phase, prosecutors pressed the court to require sweeping changes at Meta, including limits on addictive product features, stronger age-verification practices, default privacy protections and tighter oversight aimed at preventing child sexual exploitation.
The ruling could alter how Facebook and Instagram appear to users in New Mexico. Biedscheid ordered the platforms to create banners and informational screens that clearly explain safety tools, recommended practices and options for addressing problems such as inappropriate comments. Those updates, along with an educational campaign in the state, will be subject to state review.
“We disagree with the ruling and will appeal,” said a statement issued by a Meta spokesperson late Thursday.
“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,” it added.
The court said federal children’s privacy law limits how far it can go on age checks for users under 13. Under the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, known as COPPA, the court cannot require Meta to ask children for personal information or track them passively online, even if the purpose is age verification.
Biedscheid also found that forcing Meta alone to verify children’s ages, while leaving other social media companies untouched, would be “inequitable and unduly injurious” to the company.
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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 ordered Meta to report on its progress twice a year on how it’s complying with the abatement measures.
