Enough Is Enough, a Washington, D.C.-based online safety nonprofit, praised New Mexico last week for extracting a combined $942 million from Meta over the harm its platforms caused children — the largest such penalty any state has won against the tech giant to date.
“New Mexico rightly sued Meta for the harm it caused to its children. Now Meta will have to pay a whopping $942 million total — ultimately because it did not prioritize online child safety from the beginning,” said Donna Rice Hughes, President and CEO of Enough Is Enough.
The total combines two separate rulings. A New Mexico judge ordered Meta on Aug. 6 to pay $567 million — roughly $420 million of which is earmarked for treating young victims — stacking on top of $375 million in civil penalties a jury handed down back in March.
“Big numbers matter and will force Meta and its competitors and trade companies to take online child safety seriously,” Hughes said, adding that Meta “must extend those same protections to children in all states across America.”
“While these historic verdicts have been rendered against Meta, kids are still not safe online,” Hughes continued. She called on other state attorneys general to follow New Mexico’s lead and look beyond Meta alone, pointing to 11 of the country’s largest technology, social media and AI companies that spend an average of $230,000 a day lobbying the federal government against laws that would hold Big Tech accountable for prioritizing safety over profit.
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Hughes also renewed EIE’s push for the Kids Online Safety Act, or KOSA, which would require platforms to build child-safety protections into their products from the ground up rather than bolt them on later. The Senate Commerce Committee advanced the bill by voice vote on Aug. 5, sending it a step closer to a full Senate vote.
“Just like the lawsuits against Big Tobacco, this legal victory on behalf of children, families, and the movement to hold Big Tech accountable conveys that there’s a very big price to pay by Big Tech for harming children online,” Hughes said. “The tide is turning, and it’s about time.”
The court’s order also requires Meta to overhaul how it treats accounts held by users under 13 and under 18 over the next five years, changes the Tech Oversight Project outlined in its own breakdown of the ruling. Meta must sharpen its age-verification systems, default young users into private settings, and block adults from discovering or messaging minors they don’t know.
The company also faces a zero-tolerance policy for adults caught exploiting children, with a 48-hour window for human review of reports. On top of that, Meta must limit push notifications for kids at night and during school hours, hide like counts, and cap usage at 90 hours a month for younger accounts.
Movieguide® has tracked Meta’s child-safety troubles in New Mexico since Attorney General Raúl Torrez first sued the company in December 2023, alleging its algorithms connected preteens with adult predators within minutes of creating an account. That case has now cost Meta nearly a billion dollars, with a jury finding the company liable earlier this year for failing to warn users about the dangers on its platforms.
For families trying to navigate it all, EIE is pointing parents to its updated InternetSafety101.org hub, a one-stop resource covering everything from social media and gaming to AI and cyberbullying, complete with checklists and Parent Quick Guides — a reminder that no court order, however large, replaces an engaged parent.
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