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New Mexico court orders Meta to pay $567m for children’s mental health harms
The ruling also raises Meta’s total penalty to $942m, with $420m slated for treatment services and the remainder for prevention, screening and related costs over five years.
A New Mexico court has ordered Meta, the parent of Facebook and Instagram, to pay $567 million into a fund aimed at addressing adverse mental health impacts on children tied to its platforms, according to the Guardian Business.
The Thursday decision came as part of a second phase of a landmark trial that Meta lost in March. A jury previously found Meta knowingly harmed children’s mental health and concealed what it knew about child sexual exploitation, and imposed a $375 million fine, bringing the total responsibility to $942 million.
Judge Bryan Biedscheid said $420 million of the new amount would be used for treatment services for young people in New Mexico. The rest will support awareness and prevention efforts, screening services, and other costs over the next five years.
In the second phase, prosecutors sought fundamental changes aimed at reducing addictive features, improving age verification, and preventing child sexual exploitation through default privacy settings and closer oversight. The court also ordered Facebook and Instagram to build banner and informational screens explaining protection features and tools for addressing inappropriate comments, with those steps subject to state review, while noting federal children’s privacy laws limit Meta’s ability to apply age-verification tools to users under 13.