A New Mexico state judge ordered Meta to pay $567 million into a fund dedicated to addressing youth mental health harm caused by the company’s social media platforms, issuing a sweeping ruling on Aug. 6 that also requires the company to delete accounts belonging to children under 13 and simplify reporting mechanisms for underage users.
Judge Bryan Biedscheid issued the 68-page order finding that Meta’s platforms are a cause of and a substantial contributing factor to the youth mental health crisis in New Mexico, a determination that forms the legal basis for the damages award.
The fund will be primarily directed toward treatment. The largest portion, $420 million, will go toward treatment services for children harmed by Meta’s platforms. The remainder will be allocated across awareness and prevention, screening and assessment, referrals and coordination, and implementation of the programs funded by the judgment.
Meta is the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
What the ruling requires
Beyond the financial award, Biedscheid’s order imposes specific conduct requirements on Meta. The company must delete the accounts of all users under 13, along with all personal information that has been collected from those accounts. It must also make the process of reporting underage users simpler and more accessible.
The age-related requirements address a longstanding tension in social media regulation. Platforms are legally prohibited from collecting data on children under 13 under the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, but critics have long argued that the mechanisms companies use to verify age are inadequate and that significant numbers of children below the minimum age are active on these platforms. Requiring deletion of accounts and associated data represents a more direct enforcement mechanism than the disclosure and consent framework that has governed such situations federally.
The legal context
The New Mexico case is one of dozens of state-level lawsuits that have been filed against Meta and other major social media companies in recent years over their effects on youth mental health. The legal theory underpinning many of these cases holds that platforms intentionally designed features to be addictive, particularly for younger users, and that the resulting harm to mental health is a foreseeable consequence of those design choices.
Meta has disputed these characterizations and has argued in various proceedings that the causal relationship between social media use and mental health outcomes is more complicated than plaintiffs assert, pointing to research that shows mixed or inconclusive results. The company has also argued that decisions about what content people see and how platforms are designed are protected by the First Amendment.
Biedscheid’s finding that Meta’s platforms are a cause of the youth mental health crisis in New Mexico represents a direct rejection of those defenses in this proceeding, though the ruling applies only to New Mexico and would not set binding precedent in other states or in federal court.
The scale of the award and what it means
A $567 million judgment against a single defendant in a state court case is a substantial outcome by any measure, though Meta’s annual revenues run to tens of billions of dollars and the company has significant reserves. Whether the judgment will survive on appeal and whether Meta will ultimately pay the full amount remain to be determined.
The award also signals what states may be able to achieve through their own courts even as federal legislative action on social media and youth mental health has moved slowly. Several states have passed laws requiring parental consent for minors’ social media use or limiting certain features for young users, and the litigation landscape has been developing in parallel.
For New Mexico, the practical effect of the $567 million fund, if collected, would represent a significant infusion of resources into youth mental health treatment and prevention in a state where those services have historically been underfunded.
