Landmark New Mexico Jury Rules Meta Intentionally Harmed Children, Deliberately Hid Exploitation Risks

On Tuesday, a jury in New Mexico delivered a historic ruling finding that Meta Platforms knowingly damaged children’s mental health and intentionally concealed its knowledge of widespread child sexual exploitation across its social media properties. The verdict signals a major legal shift against big tech and growing momentum for government crackdowns on the industry.

The game-changing decision closes out a nearly seven-week trial, and comes as jurors in a California federal court have already spent more than a week in sequestered deliberations for a separate similar case, weighing whether Meta and YouTube bear legal liability for harms to children.

New Mexico jurors ruled in favor of state prosecutors, who argued that Meta — the parent company of Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp — consistently put corporate profits above user safety and violated key provisions of the state’s Unfair Practices Act. The jury backed all core allegations: that Meta made false and misleading public claims about its child safety protocols, and that the company engaged in “unconscionable” business practices that deliberately exploited children’s inherent vulnerability and inexperience.

Jurors counted thousands of separate violations of the act, adding up to a total $375 million penalty — a figure that amounts to less than one-fifth of the total damages prosecutors had requested. For context, Meta holds a total market valuation of roughly $1.5 trillion, and the company’s stock rose 5% in early after-hours trading immediately after the verdict, indicating investors largely dismissed the ruling as a minor setback for the business.

Juror Linda Payton, 38, explained that the panel reached a compromise on the estimated total number of teenagers harmed by Meta’s platforms, but opted to apply the maximum allowed penalty to every individual violation. With a $5,000 maximum fine per violation on the table, Payton noted the jury believed every harmed child deserved the full maximum penalty.

The ruling does not force Meta to change its platform practices immediately. A second phase of the trial, scheduled for May, will task a judge (not the jury) with determining whether Meta’s platforms qualify as a public nuisance, and whether the company must be ordered to fund public programs to address documented harms.

A Meta spokesperson said the company rejects the verdict and plans to appeal the ruling. “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 spokesperson said. “We will continue to defend ourselves vigorously, and we remain confident in our record of protecting teens online.” Meta’s legal team has long argued that the company discloses known risks and invests heavily in rooting out harmful content, though it acknowledges that some damaging material occasionally slips through its safety filters.

New Mexico’s case is among the first major lawsuits over social media’s harm to children to reach a full trial. To date, more than 40 U.S. state attorneys general have filed separate suits against Meta, alleging the company deliberately designed addictive features on Instagram and Facebook that have fueled a national youth mental health crisis.

“Meta’s house of cards is beginning to fall,” said Sacha Haworth, executive director of tech watchdog group The Tech Oversight Project. “For years, it’s been glaringly obvious that Meta has failed to stop sexual predators from turning online interactions into real world harm.” Haworth pointed to evidence from whistleblowers like former Meta employee Arturo Béjar, alongside unsealed internal documents, that paint a damning picture of the company’s longstanding awareness of harms.

New Mexico’s case relied heavily on an undercover investigation, where state agents created fake social media accounts posing as children to document sexual solicitations and track Meta’s response to those reports. The original 2023 suit, filed by New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez, also accuses Meta of failing to fully disclose or address the dangers of social media addiction. Meta does not formally recognize social media addiction as a defined condition, but company executives acknowledged during trial that “problematic use” exists, and said the company wants users to feel positive about the time they spend on its platforms.

“Evidence shows not only that Meta invests in safety because it’s the right thing to do but because it is good for business,” Meta attorney Kevin Huff told jurors in closing arguments. “Meta designs its apps to help people connect with friends and family, not to try to connect predators.”

For 30 years, big tech companies have been shielded from liability for third-party user content under Section 230 of the U.S. Communications Decency Act, alongside First Amendment protections. But New Mexico’s prosecutors argue Meta cannot hide behind these protections, because the company actively amplifies harmful content to children through its complex recommendation algorithms. “We know the output is meant to be engagement and time spent for kids,” said prosecution attorney Linda Singer. “That choice that Meta made has profound negative impacts on kids.”

Over the trial, jurors reviewed a large trove of Meta’s internal correspondence and reports related to child safety. They also heard testimony from Meta executives, platform engineers, former company whistleblowers, psychiatric experts, and tech safety consultants. Local public school educators also testified about ongoing classroom disruptions tied to social media, including sextortion schemes targeting minor students.

In reaching their verdict, jurors weighed whether specific statements about platform safety from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Instagram head Adam Mosseri, and Meta global head of safety Antigone Davis misled users. They also considered Meta’s failure to enforce its own ban on users under 13, the role of its algorithms in prioritizing sensational and harmful content, and the widespread prevalence of content promoting teen suicide on Meta’s platforms.

ParentsSOS, a coalition of families who have lost children to harms caused by social media, called the verdict a “watershed moment.” “We parents who have experienced the unimaginable — the death of a child because of social media harms — applaud this rare and momentous milestone in the years-long fight to hold Big Tech accountable for the dangers their products pose to our kids,” the group said in a statement.