A New Mexico judge has ordered Meta to pay an additional $567 million in a child safety case, bringing the company’s total US fines in the matter to $942 million. The ruling found that Meta’s platforms operated as a “public nuisance” by facilitating harm to young users.
The new penalty follows a previous $375 million verdict after a jury determined Meta failed to protect minors from dangerous content and that its algorithms steered children toward damaging material. In the latest decision, the judge delivered a scathing assessment of the platform’s impact.
“Just as noxious pollution produced by the factory can harm the common public right to reasonably clean air, the harmful effects of Meta’s platforms on children do not stay contained by its platforms and, instead, migrate to the internet as a whole and, perhaps most concerning, to the real world and create a common, societal burden on and harm to the affected children and their families and schools, as well as hospitals and law enforcement.”
New restrictions and fines
The court also imposed a series of operational restrictions on Meta. Under the new rules, users under 18 must not have their accounts recommended to adults, and adults are barred from sending direct messages to underage users. The platform must also prevent minors from sending or receiving nude images and enforce a “one-strike policy” for adult users who engage in child sexual exploitation. Additional mandates cover push notifications, usage limits and “like” counts.
Meta’s response
Meta said it “remains confident in our record of protecting teens online” and plans to appeal the ruling.
Wider legal and regulatory pressure
The decision arrives amid a broader wave of legal and regulatory scrutiny. Research indicates that 56% of Americans support a social media ban for users under 16. Next week, a federal lawsuit led by California’s Attorney General and joined by 33 other state attorneys general will proceed against Meta. The suit alleges the company “designed and deployed harmful features on its platforms that addict children and teens to their severe mental and physical detriment, all the while misleading the public regarding the existence and severity of these risks.”
Global actions
Internationally, France became the first EU country to ban social media access for under-15s in April. The European Commission has since recommended a bloc-wide framework to shield children from “predatory algorithms,” and the UK is moving toward under-16 social media bans. In Australia, where a teenage social media ban took effect in January, recent data shows most teenagers remain active online.
