A New Mexico Judge Ordered Meta to Pay $567 Million and Build a Model That Guesses Which Users Are Under 13

A New Mexico judge ordered Meta to pay $567 million and to rebuild significant parts of how Facebook and Instagram handle young users, closing out the remedies phase of a case that has become the most consequential child-safety judgment any social media company has faced in a U.S. courtroom.

Judge Bryan Biedscheid directed that $420 million of the award fund treatment services for young people, with the remainder going to awareness, prevention and screening programs spread over five years. The order follows the first phase of the case in March, when jurors found that Meta knowingly harmed children's mental health and concealed what it knew about child sexual exploitation occurring on its platforms. That verdict carried $375 million in civil penalties, separate from Friday's figure.

The non-monetary terms may matter more to the company than the check. Meta must display banner screens on Facebook and Instagram explaining available safety features and recommended practices. It must improve its age verification tools using artificial intelligence, and within two years build what the order calls an "under-13-years-of-age prediction model" — a system that infers whether an account holder is a child rather than relying on the birth date a user types in. Meta must also delete personal data it has collected on users under 13 and partner with schools to create a portal for flagging underage accounts.

The judge's options were constrained by federal law. The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, which restricts what companies may collect from children under 13 without verified parental consent, prevented Biedscheid from ordering Meta to gather personal data from young children in order to verify their ages. The result is a remedy that pushes the company toward inference — building a model that guesses who is underage — precisely because the more direct route of asking for identification runs into a privacy statute written before the platforms existed.

Meta said it will fight the ruling. "We disagree with the ruling and will appeal," the company said, adding that it "work[s] hard to keep people safe" and expressing confidence in its record on teen protection. The company has made a series of changes to teen accounts over the past two years, including default private settings for minors and restrictions on who can message them.

The New Mexico case has been closely watched because it went to a jury rather than settling, and because the state's theory was not that Meta failed to act but that it knew and chose not to. Dozens of similar suits brought by other states and by school districts are pending, and several are scheduled for trial over the next year. A verdict that survives appeal would give every one of those plaintiffs a template — and a number.