New Mexico Jury Orders Meta to Pay $375M for Harming Kids on Social Platforms

A New Mexico jury has ruled that Meta's social media platforms damage children's mental health and ordered the company to pay $375 million in penalties. The landmark verdict represents the first major court decision in a wave of lawsuits targeting social media companies over child safety concerns.

A groundbreaking court decision in New Mexico has delivered a significant blow to Meta, with jurors ruling Tuesday that the tech giant’s social media platforms cause harm to young users’ mental health and ordering the company to pay $375 million in damages.

Though the financial penalty represents just a small portion of Meta’s massive $201 billion annual revenue from 2025, the ruling signals a major change in how courts view social media companies’ responsibility for protecting children online.

For many years, tech companies have fought back against claims that their platforms deliberately harm young people through addictive design features and inadequate protection from predators and dangerous material. This year marks a turning point, with multiple state and federal cases moving toward trial, all aiming to make these companies accountable for what occurs on their services.

Legal challenges have emerged from educational institutions, government entities at various levels, and thousands of affected families. These courtroom battles represent the peak of years-long investigations into platform safety practices and whether intentional design elements create addiction while exposing users to content linked to depression, eating disorders, and suicide.

The legal outcomes could potentially weaken companies’ protections under the First Amendment and Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act from 1996, which shields tech firms from responsibility for user-generated content. Beyond expensive legal costs and potential settlements, these cases might force operational changes that could result in fewer users and reduced advertising income.

New Mexico’s top prosecutor, Attorney General Raúl Torrez, who filed the lawsuit against Meta in 2023, constructed his case by having investigators create fake child profiles on social platforms and document the sexual advances they received, along with Meta’s handling of these incidents.

Torrez is pushing for Meta to establish stronger age verification systems and take more aggressive action against harmful users on its platforms.

The jury determined that Meta violated state consumer protection regulations through thousands of separate infractions, each contributing to the total $375 million penalty.

This historic ruling followed nearly seven weeks of testimony. Jurors supported state attorneys who contended that Meta — the parent company of Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp — put financial gains ahead of user protection. The panel found Meta guilty of breaking the state’s Unfair Practices Act by concealing its knowledge about child sexual exploitation risks and mental health impacts on its platforms.

Jurors also concluded that Meta made deceptive statements and engaged in unethical business practices that exploited children’s vulnerabilities and lack of experience.

Meta expressed disagreement with the decision and announced plans to challenge it through appeals.

“We work hard to keep people safe on our platforms and are clear about the challenges of identifying and removing bad actors or harmful content. We will continue to defend ourselves vigorously, and we remain confident in our record of protecting teens online,” the company said in a statement.

The proceedings began in early February, with prosecutor Donald Migliori arguing in his opening remarks that Meta had misled the public about platform safety while deliberately designing algorithms to maximize young users’ screen time despite knowing about exploitation risks.

Meanwhile, another significant social media trial continues in Los Angeles, where jurors are still weighing evidence in a case seeking to hold tech companies responsible for youth-related harm. Attorneys argue that Meta and YouTube designed addictive features specifically targeting young users, while TikTok and Snap reached settlements before trial.

The Los Angeles case centers on a 20-year-old known by the initials “KGM,” whose situation could influence thousands of similar legal actions. KGM, referred to as Kaley by her legal team, is among several individuals chosen for test trials that will help both sides understand how their arguments perform before juries.

“This is a monumental inflection point in social media,” said Matthew Bergman of the Seattle-based Social Media Victims Law Center, which represents more than 1,000 plaintiffs in lawsuits against social media companies. “When we started doing this four years ago, no one said we’d ever get to trial. And here we are trying our case in front of a fair and impartial jury.”

Another major trial set for this summer will feature school districts challenging social media companies before U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in Oakland, California. This consolidated case includes six public school systems from across the nation as representative plaintiffs.

Attorney Jayne Conroy, who serves on the plaintiffs’ legal team and previously worked on cases holding pharmaceutical companies responsible for the opioid crisis, notes that both situations share a common foundation: addiction.

“With the social media case, we’re focused primarily on children and their developing brains and how addiction is such a threat to their well-being and … the harms that are caused to children — how much they’re watching and what kind of targeting is being done,” she said.

The medical research, she explained, “is not really all that different, surprisingly, from an opioid or a heroin addiction. We are all talking about the dopamine reaction.”

Both the social media and opioid lawsuits allege negligent behavior by the defendants.

“What we were able to prove in the opioid cases is the manufacturers, the distributors, the pharmacies, they knew about the risks, they downplayed them, they oversupplied, and people died,” Conroy said. “Here, it is very much the same thing. These companies knew about the risks, they have disregarded the risks, they doubled down to get profits from advertisers over the safety of kids. And kids were harmed and kids died.”

Social media companies have rejected claims that their products create addiction. During testimony in the Los Angeles trial, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg maintained his previous position that current scientific research has not established a causal link between social media use and mental health problems.

Some experts question whether addiction accurately describes intensive social media usage. The psychiatric community’s official reference guide, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, does not recognize social media addiction as a formal condition.

However, these companies face mounting criticism regarding social media’s impact on young people’s mental health from researchers, parents, educators, and elected officials.

“While Meta has doubled down in this area to address mounting concerns by rolling out safety features, several recent reports suggest that the company continues to aggressively prioritize teens as a user base and doesn’t always adhere to its own rules,” said Emarketer analyst Minda Smiley.

With potential appeals and settlement negotiations ahead, these legal battles against social media companies may continue for years. Unlike regulatory progress in Europe and Australia, technology oversight in the United States remains extremely slow-moving.