A state court in New Mexico has ordered Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, to pay $567 million into an abatement fund to address harms to children and adolescents, after declaring that its platforms contributed substantially to a public nuisance in the state.The order, dated August 6, comes on top of a $375 million civil penalty imposed after a jury found that Meta violated New Mexico’s Unfair Practices Act. Together, the two orders mean that Meta’s financial exposure in the case amounts to $942 million.Judge Bryan Biedscheid of the First Judicial District Court of New Mexico’s Sante Fe county also ordered a series of changes to how Meta operates Facebook and Instagram for users under 18 in New Mexico.According to a press release by the New Mexico Department of Justice, this “is the first time a court has held that a social media company can be sued, tried, and held financially and structurally accountable for building products that endanger children.”The two phases of the trialThe case, brought by New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez, was divided into two phases.Unlike the Indian legal system, in which judges decide both the facts and the law, the American system employs juries – panels of ordinary citizens – to determine matters of fact. Phase 1 was a jury trial under the state’s Unfair Practices Act. The jury was asked to determine whether Meta had misled adolescents about the safety and risks of its platforms. It found 75,000 statutory violations, with the maximum $5,000 penalty applied to each, resulting in a $375 million civil penalty.Phase 2 was a bench trial – meaning Judge Biedscheid decided the case without a jury – which concerned the state’s claim that Meta’s platforms constituted a public nuisance and its request for an order requiring Meta to “abate” that nuisance.Story continues below this adNew Mexico law defines a public nuisance to include conduct that affects citizens and is injurious to public health, safety, morals or welfare, or interferes with public rights. The judge concluded that Meta’s platforms were a cause of, and substantially contributed to, the nuisance of a severe youth mental health crisis in the state.What harms did the court find?The court found that major depressive episodes among young people had more than doubled between 2013-14 and 2022-23; suicide was the second-leading cause of death among adolescents in 2019-23 and indicators of disordered eating had also increased.It accepted expert evidence that social media was a significant contributing factor to this crisis. One analysis found that one in 10 New Mexico children aged 11-17 had at least one mental-health concern that would not have existed but for their social-media exposure. The court also found significant effects on sleep, anxiety, depression, suicide risk and disordered eating.Also Read | Meta, YouTube found liable for ‘addiction’ in the US. Could it have implications in India?The harms were not confined to mental health. The judgment records evidence of technology-facilitated sexual abuse and sextortion, including cases in which Meta’s recommendation systems connected minors with adult predators, facilitating crimes like sextortion, where predators coerce minors for financial gain by threatening to expose intimate images. Schools told the court that Instagram and other social-media use disrupted classrooms, worsened bullying and created a constant “battle for attention”.Story continues below this adWhile acknowledging that teenagers use other apps like TikTok and YouTube, the court specifically linked the crisis to Meta by noting that Facebook and Instagram are “unique in their emphasis on interpersonal relationships”. Educators and psychiatrists testified that Instagram, more than any other platform, is the primary driver of addiction, bullying and severe classroom disruptions among their students.The “polluting factory” analogyMeta used the analogy of a polluting factory, arguing that if a factory caused pollution, a court should require it to stop the harmful emissions and remedy the resulting harm, rather than shut down the factory or make it pay for unrelated problems.Judge Biedscheid accepted the analogy – but applied it against Meta. The platforms were the factory, the content and advertising were its products, and the psychological harm and sexual exploitation of children were the “pollution” to be abated, he held.The court said it was not closing Meta’s platforms or ordering it to remove particular third-party content. Instead, it targeted the design and operation of the platforms.Why intermediary immunity did not shield MetaStory continues below this adMeta argued that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act protects internet companies from liability for content supplied by their users.The judge rejected that defence for the public-nuisance claim because the state’s case was based on Meta’s own platform design and features, rather than liability for specific third-party content. These included infinite scroll, autoplay, notifications, like counts and engagement-driven recommendations.Also Read | Meta employees’ lawsuit shows that if AI fires you, proving it is the hard partAt the same time, the judge recognised Section 230 and First Amendment limits. In particular, the court declined to order broad changes to Meta’s recommendation algorithms, saying the state’s proposed algorithmic remedies were insufficiently defined and raised constitutional concerns.What must Meta now do?The $567 million abatement fund will operate for five years. Of that amount, $420 million is earmarked for treatment, with additional money for screening, prevention, referrals and evaluation.Story continues below this adThe operational orders include limiting use by under-18 users to 90 hours a month cumulatively across Facebook and Instagram, eliminating most push notifications to minors between 10 pm and 7 am and during school hours on academic weekdays, and hiding “like” counts by default for under-18 accounts, subject to parental permission.The court also directed Meta to strengthen age-assurance measures for suspected under-13 accounts, restrict adult-minor contact and recommendations, strengthen measures against sextortion and child sexual exploitation – including reporting, detection and human-review requirements for relevant CyberTip reports, fund training and coordination for New Mexico law enforcement, and provide children, parents and schools with information about social-media risks, safety tools and reporting mechanisms.The order also addresses Meta’s AI chatbots, prohibiting New Mexico users under 18 from engaging in romantic or sexualised interactions with the company’s chatbots.The judgment is significant because it treats the architecture and operation of a social-media platform, rather than merely the content posted by its users, as capable of contributing to a public nuisance.Story continues below this adBut the court’s approach was deliberately limited. It recognised that social media has benefits, that other platforms also contribute to the harms, and that courts cannot simply regulate protected speech or redesign the internet wholesale.