A New Mexico judge ordered Meta to pay $567 million and overhaul how Facebook and Instagram protect young users, ruling Thursday that the company’s platforms created a public nuisance by harming children’s mental health.
“The court considers Meta’s platforms to be analogous to the factory…and the psychological harm to and sexual exploitation of children to be the pollution that must be abated,” Judge Bryan Biedscheid wrote in his ruling. Biedscheid, who oversees New Mexico’s First Judicial District in Santa Fe, reached the decision after three weeks of testimony heard without a jury.
The case lands on ground Movieguide® has covered before — the toll social media takes on kids long before they’re old enough to understand the trade-off. Movieguide® has reported on former US Surgeon General Jerome Adams’ push to regulate platforms like addictive substances, and on the sextortion rings that stalk minors through the very apps now under court order.
New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez, whose office brought the case, said the ruling reaches well past one company’s balance sheet. “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,” Torrez said.
Thursday’s judgment splits the $567 million two ways: $420 million funds treatment services for affected young people, and $147 million covers prevention, screening and awareness programs. It builds on a March jury verdict that already cost Meta $375 million in civil penalties for violating New Mexico’s consumer protection law, pushing the company’s combined tab past $942 million.
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Biedscheid’s order also rewrites how Meta must run Facebook and Instagram for the next five years. The company must cap monthly use for teen accounts, restrict notifications sent to minors, tighten limits on adult-to-minor contact and build safeguards stopping AI chatbots from engaging in “romantic or sexualized interactions” with young users. Meta also has two years to develop an AI-driven tool for identifying users under 13, delete personal data already collected on those accounts and file compliance reports with the court twice a year.
Meta says it will appeal. “We remain confident in our record of protecting teens online and will continue to defend ourselves against claims that misrepresent the facts,” the company said in a statement, adding it has “been transparent about the challenges of identifying and removing bad actors and harmful content.”
Laura Edelson, an assistant professor at Northeastern University who studies platform accountability, said the ruling reflects states losing patience with Washington’s inaction. “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.”
New Mexico’s case is one front in a much wider fight. More than 40 states and over 1,300 school districts have filed similar public-nuisance claims against social media platforms, with a related federal case involving 29 states and the District of Columbia pending in Oakland, California, and a separate trial already underway in Tennessee.
Families of four teenagers also filed wrongful-death suits against Meta earlier in August, adding to a stack of litigation the company shows no sign of settling out of. For parents already wary of what their kids scroll past every night, the Santa Fe ruling hands them something more useful than outrage — a court record confirming what plenty of them already suspected.
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