SANTA FE, N.M.—The judge’s ruling reads like a list of demands, and its total is the largest of its kind in American law. A New Mexico court has ordered Meta Platforms to pay an additional $567 million in penalties, bringing the company’s total liability in the state to $942 million after an earlier $375 million judgment in March. The case, which began in 2024, is the highest state-level award ever issued for harm to minors on social media, and the court went beyond money: it ordered Meta to remove like counts for users in the state, suspend push notifications to minors between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m., and cap minors’ monthly usage at 90 hours.
The ruling rests on a legal theory that states have been testing for years: that social media companies created a public nuisance by designing products that addict children. New Mexico’s attorney general sued Meta in 2024, arguing that the company’s platforms deliberately exploited young users’ psychology, and that the resulting harm to minors’ mental health constituted a nuisance to the public at large. The court agreed, and the Aug. 7 judgment adds a second tranche of penalties to the March award. Meta said it will appeal, and the case is likely to be tied up in appellate courts for years.
The remedy is as notable as the fine. Courts rarely dictate how products work, and the New Mexico judge’s order to remove like counts, restrict notification timing and cap usage amounts to a regulatory regime imposed by a single judge on a single state. If it stands, it would apply to Meta’s platforms—Instagram and Facebook—for users in New Mexico, a small market but a precedent-setting one. The order gives a preview of what social media regulation could look like if legislatures and courts continue down the same path.
The numbers in the case tell the story of a state that has made itself a testing ground for tech regulation. New Mexico has pursued tech companies on multiple fronts, and its attorney general’s office has built a unit devoted to online safety. The $942 million total is more than the entire annual budget of several state agencies, a scale that signals how seriously the state takes the claim that social media harms children. For Meta, the amount is manageable relative to its cash reserves, but the principle is not: a ruling that the company created a public nuisance by design would apply to every state that adopts the same theory.
The evidence in the case drew on internal Meta documents, which plaintiffs said showed the company knew its platforms were harmful to minors and chose engagement over safety. Meta has denied those claims, arguing that it has invested heavily in parental controls and age verification, and that its platforms provide value to young people who use them responsibly. The company’s appeal will likely focus on the legal theory itself: whether a product’s design can constitute a nuisance, and whether a state can impose product-specific requirements through a court judgment rather than a legislature.
The political context is unforgiving for Meta. Social media regulation has become one of the rare issues with bipartisan support, and state attorneys general across the country have filed similar lawsuits against Meta and other platforms. The New Mexico case is the furthest along, and its success has given other states a template. Legal experts said the ruling could accelerate copycat litigation, as states weigh the combination of large damages and operational remedies that New Mexico won. Meta is appealing, but the case has already changed the calculus for its lawyers.
The operational requirements, if enforced, would touch the products themselves. Removing like counts would change how Instagram and Facebook feel in New Mexico, eliminating one of the engagement loops that the court found harmful. The notification ban would quiet the streams of alerts that pull teenagers back to their phones after bedtime. The 90-hour monthly cap would, for the heaviest users, turn off the apps entirely for part of each month. Meta has argued that such requirements are impossible to implement cleanly—age verification is imperfect, and usage caps can be evaded—but the court was not persuaded.
The larger question is where this leaves the social media industry. The New Mexico ruling is one front in a multi-front war: Congress has debated a children’s online safety bill for years, states have passed age-verification laws, and plaintiffs’ lawyers are building mass cases around the same evidence. The industry has responded with a wave of self-regulation, including parental controls and messaging changes, but the New Mexico case shows that self-regulation has not satisfied the courts. If the ruling survives appeal, it will be the first time a court has imposed product design changes on a major platform, a precedent with implications far beyond one state.
For the families at the center of the case, the ruling is a measure of vindication, and for the lawyers who brought it, a template. For Meta, it is the latest line item in a legal bill that keeps growing, and the beginning of a fight it expects to win on appeal. The company said it will challenge both the penalty and the remedies, and the appellate process could take years. In the meantime, the ruling stands as the strongest statement yet from an American court that social media’s business model has a price, and that states are willing to make the companies that run it pay.
