New Mexico court orders Meta and Instagram to pay $567M to address kids' mental health

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 the social media giant lost in March.

In a late Thursday ruling, Judge Bryan Biedscheid said the bulk of the money — $420 million — 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.

In the first phase, jurors had ordered $375 million in civil penalties against Meta, determining that it knowingly harmed children's mental health and concealed what it knew about child sexual exploitation on its platforms.

In the second phase, prosecutors had 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.

'We disagree with the ruling and will appeal,' said a statement issued by a Meta spokesperson late Thursday.

'We 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. We remain confident in our record of protecting teens online and will continue to defend ourselves against claims that misrepresent the facts,' it added.

The court said federal children's privacy laws prevent Meta from applying age-verification tools to children under 13. The Children's 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.

The court also noted that ordering Meta to verify children's ages for only Meta and not other social media companies would be 'inequitable and unduly injurious' to the company.