A New Mexico judge ordered Meta on August 6 to pay $567 million and change how Instagram and Facebook treat young users in the state. The five-year order adds time limits, privacy defaults, age-assurance measures and court reporting, while Meta has said it will appeal.

The New Mexico Department of Justice said the new award follows a $375 million jury penalty imposed in March, bringing Meta's financial exposure in the case to $942 million. Judge Bryan Biedscheid of the New Mexico First Judicial District Court also found that the platforms constituted a public nuisance in the state.

Most of the new award is for treatment services

The $567 million comes from the second phase of a case New Mexico filed in 2023. A jury decided the first phase in March, finding that Meta violated the state's consumer-protection law and ordering $375 million in civil penalties. Biedscheid then heard the state's public-nuisance claim and requests for money and operational changes without a jury.

The court directed $420 million of the new award to treatment services for young people, with the remaining $147 million assigned to awareness, prevention, screening, referrals and other costs over five years. The Associated Press reported that New Mexico lawmakers will decide how the money is distributed and that an appeal could delay payment.

The order changes defaults and limits use

The court ordered a monthly limit of 90 hours on Meta's platforms for users under 18 in New Mexico. It also required restrictions on artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot interactions, recurring warnings about platform risks, overnight limits on push notifications and stronger default privacy settings for minors.

The safeguards include hiding public like counts by default and preventing Meta from recommending a child's account to an unconnected adult or allowing such an adult to message the child. A parent or guardian could override the setting that hides like counts.

The order leaves some prominent design features unchanged. Biedscheid did not require Meta to remove autoplay, infinite scroll or algorithmic recommendations. AP reported that the judge reasoned that restricting those features only at Meta, while competitors continued to use them, would unfairly harm the company.

A judge's gavel resting beside law books (illustrative image)

Age assurance stops short of a universal identity check

Meta must continue improving the tools it uses to estimate a user's age in New Mexico. Those systems can draw on account signals such as contacts and the content a person posts or views. The company must also use reasonable efforts over the next two years to develop a model focused on identifying users under 13.

The court did not impose a universal requirement for every user to submit an identity document. It instead directed Meta to seek proof of age from New Mexico users it knows or estimates are under 13, according to AP. Meta must delete personal information it collected from users identified as children under 13.

Meta must work with schools or a child-safety organization on a portal that allows school staff to flag accounts that may belong to children under 13. The company must file public compliance reports with the court twice a year for five years. The order does not provide a deadline for every technical change, and distinguishing New Mexico users from people elsewhere presents an additional implementation problem.

Meta will appeal as other state cases proceed

Meta said it works to keep users safe, has been open about the difficulty of identifying harmful content and bad actors, and remains confident in its record of protecting teenagers. The company said it will appeal. That leaves both the timing of any payment and the start of several court-ordered safeguards unresolved.

The New Mexico case is one part of a wider US court fight over social-media design and young users. AP reported that Meta is due to face the first four of 29 states in a federal multidistrict case in California later in August. Eight other states filed separate cases in their own courts.

What remains uncertain

The measures apply only to young users in New Mexico. They do not create a nationwide US rule, and they do not change the legal or regulatory status of Meta's services in other countries.

The effectiveness of the 90-hour limit, age estimates and messaging restrictions cannot be measured before they are implemented. APPI News reviewed the state justice department's summary and AP's reporting on the judgment but did not independently compare every operational detail against the full court record.