Two landmark jury verdicts against social media companies are landing as a broader wave of lawsuits seeks to hold platforms responsible for harm alleged to children’s mental health, raising questions about what penalties—and what courtroom-ordered remedies—could realistically change.
In New Mexico and California, juries found Meta and YouTube liable in cases that prosecutors and plaintiffs said turned on the platforms’ effects on minors, with the two verdicts together producing $381 million in civil penalties and damages, according to the Associated Press report.
The New Mexico case produced $375 million in civil penalties against Meta, the owner of Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp. The AP report said a Santa Fe jury endorsed the maximum penalty of $5,000 per violation of the state Unfair Practices Act and multiplied that figure by thousands of social media accounts for children under 18.
In California, the AP report said jurors ruled that Meta and YouTube—described as Google’s video streaming platform—must pay at least $3 million in damages to a 20-year-old woman who said she became addicted to social media as a child and that the addiction exacerbated her mental health struggles. The report added that TikTok and Snap settled before the trial began, and that California jurors recommended an additional $3 million in punitive damages pending a judge’s final review.
Meta and Google disputed the outcomes and focused on legal limits. The AP report said Meta “disagrees with the verdicts and plans to appeal the jury’s finding that it violated the state Unfair Practices Act,” and it pointed to the Communications Decency Act’s Section 230, which it said shields tech companies from legal responsibility for posted content. The report also said the companies’ stock reaction was muted, with Meta’s stock closing slightly higher Wednesday even as it remained down about 8% year-to-date.
Whether the verdicts will force changes to the products themselves is less certain. The AP report said the New Mexico and California verdicts “don’t mandate specific changes” to social media design or the algorithms that deliver content to users at a broad level, while a second phase of the New Mexico trial scheduled for May could put potential platform remedies on the table.
In that New Mexico phase, the AP report said the judge—without a jury—would determine whether Meta created a public nuisance and could then impose restrictions and order the company to pay for programs meant to remedy potential harms to children. The AP report said New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez, who filed the lawsuit against Meta in 2023, said his office wants improvements to Meta’s enforcement of minimum age limits and removal of sexual predators, and that the request includes lifting encryption on communications that could interfere with police work.
Meta’s response described existing and planned safety efforts. The AP report said Meta told the court it “continuously works to improve safety,” including steps that phase out encryption on Instagram and limit access to explicit content by teenagers, block unsolicited messages to children from adults, and help young users manage time spent on its platforms and avoid sleep disruptions.
The California case also drew broader attention for how it could shape other litigation. The AP report said the California verdict has “much broader legal and financial implications,” including its designation as a bellwether test that might guide how other lawsuits proceed. The report said there are thousands of those lawsuits pending, including hundreds in California, and that the New Mexico verdict could be an early indicator for suits brought by other publicly elected prosecutors. It also said attorneys general in more than 40 states have filed suit against Meta, seeking remedies in U.S. federal court.