Meta Owes $375 Million in New Mexico Teen-Safety Verdict (2)

A jury found that Meta Platforms Inc. misled New Mexico teenagers about the safety of its social networks, even when it knew platforms like Facebook and Instagram had become breeding grounds for sexual predators.

The 12-person panel in Santa Fe New Mexico state court determined Meta’s liable for violating two state consumer protection laws, and awarded civil penalties totaling $375 million.

The jury spent only a day of deliberations before siding with the state’s attorney general Raúl Torrez who’d accused the social media giant of prioritizing profits over safety for years while deceiving teenage users and their parents about the risks of sexual exploitation. The trial is the first to reach a verdict among a wave of litigation targeting Meta and other social media companies including Snap Inc., TikTok Inc., and Google LLC’s YouTube over harms to teenage users.

The $375 million penalty is far less than the $2 billion fine New Mexico asked of the jury in closing arguments. The next phase of the trial will be decided by Judge Bryan Biedscheid, who could determine that Meta acted as a public nuisance and force the company to undergo policy changes.

Torrez’s lawsuit, filed in 2023, stems in part from an undercover investigation conducted by his office that created decoy Facebook and Instagram accounts posing as child users. The lawsuit alleged the accounts were served sexually explicit material and were solicited for sex trafficking.

In one case, Meta failed to flag a decoy account of a mother who sought to sell her daughter for trafficking, the lawsuit alleged.

During trial, New Mexico argued that Meta ignored internal data indicating its platforms were being used to connect children with sexual predators and that the networks had become a digital marketplace for trading child sexual abuse material.

Meta countered that it never guaranteed complete safety toall teenage users on its platforms and consistently disclosed to parents and teenagers that bad actors can misuse the social networks.

The jurors heard six-weeks of testimony from top Meta executives, including a recorded video deposition of CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who said the company has worked to improve safety.

“I’m not sure that there is a need for us to communicate about every single thing that we’re trying to improve in our products,” he said in a deposition played to the jury.

A Meta spokesperson said in a statement that the company disagrees with the verdict and will appeal. “We work hard to keep people safe on our platforms and are clear about the challenges of identifying and removing bad actors or harmful content,” the statement said.

Torrez said in a statement that the verdict is a “historic victory for every child and family who has paid the price for Meta’s choice to put profits over kids’ safety.”

“The substantial damages the jury ordered Meta to pay should send a clear message to big tech executives that no company is beyond the reach of the law,” the statement said.

Meanwhile, jurors in Los Angeles were on their eighth day of deliberations in a separate lawsuit by a 20-year-old woman who blames compulsive use of Meta’s Instagram and Google’s YouTube for her mental health struggles. Online safety advocates, including parents of children who died by suicide allegedly stemming from social media use, erupted in cheers in the Spring Street Courthouse as they watched the New Mexico verdict on a computer.

Jurors in Los Angeles told state court Judge Carolyn Kuhl on Monday that they were struggling to come to a consensus on the allegations against one of the companies, although they did not identify which one.

Meta still faces a lawsuit in federal court in California from a coalition of over 30 state attorney’s general that allege the company has caused a youth mental health crisis and has violated federal child internet privacy laws. That case is expected to go to trial this summer.

The case is State of New Mexico v. Meta Platforms Inc., N.M. Dist. Ct., No. D-101-CV-2023-02838, 3/24/26.