When a New Mexico jury delivered its verdict in March, it imposed the maximum available penalty on Meta: $375 million. That figure, already the largest of its kind in a US state-level social media trial, has now grown considerably larger. On Thursday, Judge Bryan Biedscheid added a further $567 million to the total, bringing Meta's full financial liability to $942 million — a sum that dwarfs most regulatory fines levied against technology companies outside the European Union. The breakdown of Thursday's ruling is precise in its intent.

Of the additional $567 million, $420 million is earmarked specifically for mental health treatment services for young people in New Mexico, while the remainder is allocated across prevention programmes, awareness campaigns, screening services, and administrative costs, all to be disbursed over the next five years. The March verdict had already established, for the first time in US litigation, that Meta bore legal responsibility for harm carried out on its own platform — a finding that drew directly on a 2023 Guardian investigation revealing how Facebook and Instagram had functioned as marketplaces for child sex trafficking. Several former Meta content moderators had testified that they flagged child-grooming material which was subsequently not escalated for action. The court stopped short of imposing the sweeping structural reforms that prosecutors had sought, including mandatory overhauls of addictive design features.

However, Judge Biedscheid did order both Facebook and Instagram to display clear informational screens explaining their child-protection tools. On age verification, the court acknowledged a legal constraint: federal children's privacy law bars Meta from applying verification tools to users under thirteen. Rather than require verification outright — which the judge said would be "inequitable" if applied to Meta alone — the ruling directs the company to refine its AI-based age-assurance systems and develop a dedicated predictive model for users below that threshold.