A New Mexico court has ordered Meta to pay $567 million into a fund. Meta owns Facebook and Instagram. The court found that its platforms contributed to harms to young people in the state, and it ordered the fund to help address those harms, according to CNBC. Judge Bryan Biedscheid issued the ruling late Thursday, August 6, 2026, the Associated Press reported. He also ordered changes to how Meta runs its apps.
The full amount Meta now owes in the case is about $942 million. That total combines the new $567 million fund with $375 million in civil penalties. A jury ordered those penalties in March 2026, according to the Associated Press. The two amounts are separate. Added together, they reach about $942 million. The Associated Press reported that this total is a small fraction of Meta's profit, which was about $60 billion in 2025.
The order is also far below what the state had sought. Meta said in a financial filing that the New Mexico Attorney General planned to seek up to $62.85 billion in penalties, according to CNBC. The cited sources do not explain how the court moved from that request to about $942 million. So it is not clear how much of that gap the ruling closes.
Investors seemed to shrug off the ruling, the Associated Press reported. Meta's stock fell less than half a percent, to $589.44, in after-hours trading.
Some experts call the case social media's "Big Tobacco" moment, according to CNBC. In the 1990s, tobacco companies were forced to pay billions of dollars for misleading the public about their products. CNBC reported that their power then fell sharply. Whether this ruling will weaken Meta in the same way is not yet clear.
Most of the fund, $420 million, will pay for treatment services for young people, according to CNBC. This $420 million is part of the $567 million fund, not an extra cost. The rest will pay for awareness, prevention, screening, and referrals. The money will be spent over the next five years, according to the Associated Press.
The court also ordered changes to Meta's apps. It told Facebook and Instagram to build banner and information screens. These screens must clearly explain the apps' safety tools. Meta must also run an educational campaign in New Mexico. The state can review these changes, according to the Associated Press.
Federal law limited some steps the court could take. Under the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, the court could not order Meta to collect personal data from children under 13, even for age checks, according to the Associated Press. The court also said singling out Meta alone for age checks would be unfair to the company. Instead, it ordered Meta to keep improving its age tools in New Mexico. These tools use artificial intelligence to guess a user's age. Meta must also try to build a special under-13 prediction model within the next two years, the Associated Press reported.
Judge Biedscheid wrote that Meta's platforms are "a significant contributing factor" to the mental health crisis among the state's youth, according to CNBC. He added that Meta "is not alone in this regard." He also wrote that expert testimony supported a link between social media and that crisis.
New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez praised the ruling. "Today's decision is a victory for every parent who has worried about what social media is doing to their child and every child who deserves to grow up safer online," he said. Meta disagrees with the ruling and plans to appeal, according to CNBC. A company spokesperson said, "We work hard to keep people safe on our platforms and have been transparent about the challenges of identifying and removing bad actors and harmful content." The spokesperson said Meta stays confident in its record of protecting teens online.
The case began when Torrez sued Meta in 2023, after an undercover operation, according to CNBC. The first phase ended with the jury verdict in March 2026. A second phase then decided the remedies. It began in May, according to CNBC. The judge ruled on August 6. It is one of many lawsuits Meta faces over how children use its apps, according to CNBC.