A court in New Mexico has found Meta to be a public nuisance that must be held liable for services that damage children’s mental health
Meta has been issued the best part of $1bn in fines
On 7 August 2026, the First Judicial District Court for New Mexico, US imposed a fine of $567m (£420m) on Meta over the impact of its social media services on the state’s youth mental health crisis. The court’s final judgment found Meta to be in violation of the New Mexico Unfair Practices Act (NMUPA) for misleading the public about the safety of its platforms for children. In March 2026, in Phase 1 of the two-part trial, a jury found that Meta had committed 75,000 violations of the act, issuing a $375m (£278m) civil penalty – the maximum possible under the NMUPA. In Phase 2, the court ruled that Meta’s platforms constitute a “public nuisance” in New Mexico and brought the company’s total financial exposure in this state to $942m (£698m). The court has also ordered Meta to implement reforms to its platforms that will remain in effect for five years. Raúl Torrez (Attorney General, New Mexico) stated that “for the first time, a court has ruled that a social media giant can be held liable for building products that endanger children”. Adding that Meta lied to parents and policymakers about the danger, Torrez stated that the company now “pays for that choice”.
The tech firm must make its platforms safer for children
The latest ruling found that Meta had knowingly designed its platforms to maximise engagement, including in ways that are harmful to children, and did not adequately disclose the risks of harm to its users. In addition to the financial penalty, the court ordered Meta to implement a range of reforms to its platforms for users in New Mexico, including:
Implementing more rigorous age verification;
Maintaining and strengthening protections for Teen Accounts;
Requiring enhanced protections against sextortion and child sexual exploitation, including tougher enforcement against offending adult accounts;
Preventing minors from sending or receiving nude images;
Eliminating push notifications for users under 18 during overnight hours;
Requiring default privacy protections for minors, including hiding public “like” counts;
Imposing mandatory time-use limits for users under 18; and
Funding a statewide education and public awareness campaign in New Mexico.
Meta will also be required to file semi-annual public compliance reports with the court, documenting its progress in implementing every aspect of the order. The court stopped short of mandating “hard” age-verification requirements, noting that such policy choices sit with lawmakers to determine, and not the courts. However, Torrez intends to table a social media safety bill in New Mexico to close the perceived legislative gap, which would mandate age verification for platforms operating in the state and would be paired with a broader overhaul of the state’s consumer protection rules to reflect the scale and harm of the modern digital economy. He stated that while “a courtroom can punish what already happened”, “only a law can stop it from happening again”, and has called for nationwide action to prevent further harm to social media users.
Social media companies could face more fines over child safety and addictive design
Torrez noted that the two rulings in New Mexico reflect “bipartisan momentum” and provide “a blueprint other states, and other countries confronting this same crisis can now follow”. Various states are taking similar legal action against Meta and other platforms, including a coalition of states represented by California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey. On 10 August 2026, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that lawsuits accusing Meta, Google, TikTok and other social media companies of designing addictive platforms can proceed, despite the companies’ attempt to overturn them. The companies had argued that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act 1996, which protects digital companies from liability over content posted by their users, shields them from lawsuits over the potentially addictive nature of their platforms. The rejection of this appeal opens them up to more financial penalties, particularly given the hundreds of lawsuits that have already been filed following the award of $6m (£4.5m) in damages to a woman in March 2026, who successfully sued Meta and YouTube over her childhood addiction to social media.
