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On August 6, 2026, New Mexico judge Bryan Biedscheid ordered Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, to pay more than $567 million in a case centered on the alleged harm to children caused by Meta’s social media platforms.
The order comes after a jury earlier this year found Meta liable on claims that included exposing young users to serious online dangers and making them more vulnerable to predators. The case is significant not only because of the size of the award, but also because it adds to a growing body of litigation examining how social media platforms are designed and what companies knew about the risks to younger users. Those questions matter to families well beyond New Mexico, including parents here in Tennessee whose children have grown up using the same platforms.
Meta intends to appeal.
The New Mexico Attorney General filed the lawsuit in 2023. At trial, the state argued that Meta was aware of serious risks to children on its platforms but did not do enough to address them.
A jury earlier this year found in favor of New Mexico and awarded $375 million in damages. The new court order brings the amount Meta has been ordered to pay to more than $567 million, including relief intended to address what the court found to be a public nuisance affecting children in the state.
Parents have been raising concerns about social media and children for years. Those concerns go beyond the content a child may happen to see online. A central issue in many of the newer cases is the design of the platforms themselves: features intended to hold attention, encourage repeated use, and keep people coming back.
That distinction matters. The legal question is not simply whether social media can be harmful. It is whether a company that understands how its product affects young users has a social responsibility to reduce foreseeable risks in the way that its product is designed and operated.
Put another way, if a platform is designed to maximize engagement and the company knows that certain features may be especially difficult for children to disengage from, what steps should the company reasonably be expected to take?
Juries are now beginning to hear these cases.
One reaction we often see when these cases are discussed is that parents should be the ones responsible for controlling their children’s social media use. Parents certainly do have that responsibility. But that does not necessarily end the inquiry.
The law routinely recognizes that more than one person or company can have responsibilities when an injury occurs. Parents make decisions for their children, while companies that design and sell products also have obligations concerning safety, warnings, and foreseeable risks.
That principle is familiar in other settings. Manufacturers are expected to consider foreseeable misuse and dangers in designing their products. Drug companies may have duties to disclose known risks. Automakers are expected to account for safety when they build vehicles.
The emerging social media cases ask whether similar principles should apply when the product is a digital platform rather than a physical one.
Plaintiffs in these cases allege that some social media companies knew particular design features could encourage compulsive use, especially among children and teenagers, yet continued to deploy algorithms and engagement tools intended to keep users on the platforms for longer periods of time.
Those allegations still have to be proved in each case. Meta disputes the claims against it, and the New Mexico ruling is now on appeal. Even so, the recent verdicts are important because they show that courts are allowing juries to evaluate the evidence and decide where responsibility should fall.
The New Mexico case is part of a much broader wave of litigation involving social media companies and alleged harm to minors. Although this particular verdict arose in New Mexico, the underlying questions are national in scope. Children in Tennessee use the same platforms, are exposed to many of the same engagement features, and may be affected by the same design choices being examined in courts around the country.
As mentioned, courts in several jurisdictions have allowed claims against social media companies to move forward, and some of those cases have now reached juries. The results are beginning to provide a clearer picture of how judges and jurors may view allegations involving platform design, addiction, child safety, and corporate knowledge.
As litigation continues, more attention likely will be paid to what the companies knew internally, when they knew it, and whether the safeguards they adopted were reasonable given those risks.
Not every child who uses social media has a legal claim, and every case depends on its own facts. But Tennessee families should be aware that the developing litigation is focused on more than ordinary screen time or disagreements over household rules. The claims generally concern whether particular platform features were designed in ways that encouraged compulsive use by minors and whether companies failed to act reasonably in light of risks they allegedly knew or should have known about.
For families whose children began using social media as minors, developed serious compulsive or addictive patterns of use, and later suffered significant emotional, psychological, or physical harm, it may be worth having the circumstances reviewed. The important questions can include when the child began using the platforms, how intensely they were used, what features appeared to drive continued use, and what harm followed.
The law in this area is developing, and recent verdicts do not mean that every claim will succeed. They do show, however, that courts and juries are taking allegations involving social media design and harm to children seriously. Ponce Law is currently accepting and evaluating potential social media addiction cases. If you are the parent or guardian of a young person who became addicted to social media while still a minor and suffered significant harm, we encourage you to contact our office. We can review what happened, discuss the developing law, and help determine whether the facts may support a potential claim.
