{"id":3742,"date":"2026-08-07T05:07:24","date_gmt":"2026-08-07T05:07:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/trustedmovinggroups.com\/?p=3742"},"modified":"2026-08-07T05:07:24","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T05:07:24","slug":"meta-ordered-to-pay-567m-to-address-kids-mental-health-online","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trustedmovinggroups.com\/?p=3742","title":{"rendered":"Meta ordered to pay $567M to address kids\u2019 mental health online"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

A New Mexico court has ordered Instagram and Facebook parent company Meta to pay $567 million to address harms to young people from its platforms in the second phase of a landmark trial.<\/p>\n

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Judge Bryan Biedscheid said in a ruling late Thursday that the bulk of the money \u2014 $420 million \u2014 will be used for treatment services for young people. The rest will go toward awareness and prevention, screening services and other costs over the next five years.<\/p>\n

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The new penalty is in addition to the $375 million in civil penalties that jurors ordered against Meta in March after determining the company knowingly harmed children\u2019s mental health and concealed what it knew about child sexual exploitation on its platforms. In the second phase, prosecutors asked the judge to impose fundamental changes at Meta aimed at reining in addictive features, improving age verification and preventing child sexual exploitation through default privacy settings and closer oversight.<\/p>\n

The total amount Meta is responsible for \u2014 $942 million \u2014 is a small fraction of its annual profit, which was about $60 billion in 2025. Investors seemed to shrug off the New Mexico ruling in after-hours trading Thursday, sending Meta\u2019s stock down less than half a percent to $589.44.<\/p>\n

Still, the ruling is another setback for Meta, which faces an avalanche of lawsuits from thousands of families of children harmed by social media.<\/p>\n

New Mexico Attorney General Ra\u00fal Torrez said it sends an unmistakable message that companies will be held accountable when their product designs knowingly put children at risk.<\/p>\n

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\u201cToday\u2019s 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,\u201d he said in a statement.<\/p>\n

Meta vowed to appeal.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe 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,\u201d the company said in a statement. \u201cWe remain confident in our record of protecting teens online and will continue to defend ourselves against claims that misrepresent the facts.\u201d<\/p>\n

The look of Meta\u2019s platforms could change<\/h2>\n

The judge ordered Facebook and Instagram to build banner and informational screens to clearly explain its protection features, best practices and tools to address inappropriate comment, for example, and display them regularly. Those changes and an educational campaign in New Mexico would be subject to review by the state.<\/p>\n

The court said federal children\u2019s privacy laws prevent Meta from applying age-verification tools to children under 13. The Children\u2019s Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA, means it cannot order Meta to request children to submit personal data or be passively tracked online, even for age verification purposes.<\/p>\n

The court also noted that ordering verification of children\u2019s ages only for Meta and not other social media companies would be \u201cinequitable and unduly injurious\u201d to the company.<\/p>\n

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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\u2019s 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 \u201cunder-13-years-of-age prediction model\u201d in the next two years.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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 also ordered Meta to report on its progress twice a year on how it\u2019s complying with the abatement measures.<\/p>\n

Meta is gearing up for a trial this month in California amid flood of lawsuits<\/h2>\n

Meta is also gearing up for a trial later this month in federal court in Oakland, California. Here, Meta will face the first four of 29 states that sued it in a federal multidistrict lawsuit filed in 2023 for contributing to the youth mental health crisis by knowingly designing features on Instagram and Facebook that addict children to its platforms.<\/p>\n

Eight states, including Tennessee, where a trial is currently ongoing, filed lawsuits in their own state courts.<\/p>\n

And late last month, Meta, TikTok, Snap and Google\u2019s YouTube were sued by the families of four teenagers who died by suicide over what they describe as \u201cyears of escalating harms\u201d from using their platforms that eventually resulted in their deaths.<\/p>\n

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What comes out of New Mexico is the first of many dominoes that will fall for Meta, said Laura Edelson, an assistant professor at Northeastern University focusing on social media and cybersecurity.<\/p>\n

\u201cAmerica is not going to pass a law that bans social media,\u201d Edelson said. \u201cBut if companies like Meta know they\u2019re causing harm to users by product design, the states are finally finding a way to rein this in.\u201d<\/p>\n

If you or someone you know is in crisis, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255, text HOME to 741741 or visit <\/em>SpeakingOfSuicide.com\/resources<\/em><\/p>\n

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The new penalty is in addition to the $375 million in civil penalties that jurors ordered against the parent company of Facebook and Instagram in March.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3741,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tech-news"],"yoast_head":"\nMeta ordered to pay $567M to address kids\u2019 mental health online - Trusted Moving Group<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/trustedmovinggroups.com\/?p=3742\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Meta ordered to pay $567M to address kids\u2019 mental health online - 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