A New Mexico jury ordered Meta to pay $375 million on Monday after a nearly seven-week trial, finding the company engaged in "unconscionable" trade practices by knowingly harming children's mental health and safety while concealing knowledge of child sexual exploitation on its platforms. The verdict, which New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez's office called a landmark, found that Meta made false or misleading statements about platform safety, unfairly exploited children's vulnerabilities and inexperience, and failed to disclose what the company knew about predatory behavior on Instagram and Facebook. The jury identified thousands of separate violations — each counting toward the total penalty at $5,000 per violation. Juror Linda Payton explained the jury's reasoning: "Each child was worth the maximum amount." NPR confirmed the verdict.
Meta spokesperson said the company "works hard to keep people safe on our platforms" and expressed confidence in its teen safety record, while disagreeing with the verdict and announcing it would appeal. The company argued that it has implemented dozens of new parental controls, age verification tools, and restrictions on content seen by teenagers, and that the trial relied in part on undercover investigation using decoy accounts that may not reflect typical user experiences. Meta will not be required to change its practices immediately as the appeal proceeds.
The $375 million award is less than one-fifth of what prosecutors had requested, reflecting what juror Payton described as a compromise on the number of affected teenagers while preserving the per-child maximum. A judge — not the jury — will determine in a separate May proceeding whether Meta's platforms constitute a public nuisance under New Mexico law, a finding that could result in additional remedies and structural changes to how the company operates its services in the state. New Mexico's case is one of more than 40 state attorneys general lawsuits pending against Meta over similar allegations of harm to minors.
The verdict represents the first major trial verdict in the wave of state attorney general litigation against social media companies over children's safety. Several states have passed or are pursuing laws requiring age verification on social media platforms, parental consent for minors to create accounts, and limits on algorithmic recommendation systems that expose children to potentially harmful content. Meta has argued that sweeping state-by-state regulations create a patchwork that is technologically unworkable, and has lobbied for federal preemption legislation. The jury verdict adds political pressure to that congressional debate, as it provides a concrete dollar figure to what was previously a largely theoretical legal risk for the industry.
Left-Leaning Emphasis
- NPR and left-leaning coverage framed the verdict as a historic accountability moment for Big Tech, emphasizing the human stories behind the lawsuit — the children and families harmed by algorithmic exploitation — and calling for Congress to pass federal children's online safety legislation rather than leaving protection to a fragmented state-by-state legal battle.
- Left-leaning coverage highlighted the gap between the $375 million verdict and Meta's quarterly profits of over $15 billion, arguing that the penalty — while historically large — represents a tiny fraction of the company's earnings and may not create sufficient deterrence without federal regulatory action.
Right-Leaning Emphasis
- Right-leaning coverage of the verdict emphasized parental rights — the argument that parents, not state attorneys general or federal regulators, should be the primary decision-makers about their children's social media use — while acknowledging that Meta's documented concealment of safety risks crossed a legal and moral line.
- Conservative commentary noted that the New Mexico verdict came under a Democratic attorney general pursuing what critics characterized as a litigation-first approach, contrasting it with a regulatory approach that would give companies clear rules to follow rather than exposing them to state-by-state jury verdicts on standards that vary by jurisdiction.