New Mexico Court Orders Meta to Pay $567 Million for Child Safety Measures

A court in New Mexico has ordered Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, to pay $567 million to address harms to young users on its platforms. The ruling comes in the second phase of a trial that the social media giant lost in March.

In a late Thursday ruling, Judge Bryan Biedscheid ordered that $420 million of the payment be used for treatment services for young people. The remaining amount will go toward awareness, prevention, screening services, and other costs over the next five years.

The first phase of the trial had already resulted in $375 million in civil penalties against Meta, after a jury determined that the company knowingly harmed children's mental health and concealed what it knew about child sexual exploitation on its platforms.

In this second phase, prosecutors had requested deeper changes at Meta, including curbing addictive features, improving age verification, and preventing child sexual exploitation through stricter privacy settings and oversight. The court responded by directing Meta to build banner and informational screens on its platforms to clearly explain protection features, best practices, and tools to address inappropriate comments. These changes, along with an educational campaign in New Mexico, will be subject to review by the state.

Meta has said it disagrees with the ruling and will appeal. In a statement, a spokesperson said: "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." The New Mexico Department of Justice has not yet commented publicly on the ruling.

The court acknowledged that federal children's privacy laws, particularly the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), prevent Meta from applying age-verification tools to children under 13. The court cannot order Meta to request personal data from children or passively track them online, even for age verification purposes. The ruling also noted that requiring age verification 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 improving its age assurance tools in New Mexico, which currently include using artificial intelligence to estimate a user's age based on signals such as friends, content posted, and content consumed. Meta must also attempt to develop a dedicated "under-13-years-of-age prediction model" within the next two years.

Additionally, Meta is required to request proof of age for users it estimates to be under 13. If the company determines a user is under 13, or under 18 but cannot estimate a specific age, it must treat that user as underage 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 must delete personal information it has collected on users under 13.

Finally, the court ordered Meta to report on its compliance with these measures twice a year.