A judge in New Mexico may have just established a new framework for more effective social media restrictions for teenagers, while ruling that Meta will pay a $567 million fine for harm caused to teenagers through its apps.

According to KOB News, New Mexico's Chief District Court Judge Bryan Biedscheid stated that the state is facing a teenage mental health crisis, and Meta's platforms are "a significant driver of this crisis."

This fine is the second part of a two-phase lawsuit filed by New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez. In the first phase, a jury verdict in March of this year found that Meta failed to protect young users from child predators within its apps, and the jury approved $375 million in civil damages against the social media giant.

The second phase also involved Meta's failure to protect teenagers, and this ruling brings the company's total financial impact to $942 million.

These funds will be used for support, awareness, and prevention measures.

Additionally, Judge Biedscheid outlined a multi-step plan that Meta must implement to limit the negative impact of social media on teenagers. These measures include:

  • Meta must expand teen safety measures on Facebook and Instagram in New Mexico;
  • Meta must set all profiles of users under 18 to private by default and block adult users from contacting teenagers by default (Meta has already implemented this feature);
  • Meta must disable push notifications for all users under 18 between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m., and between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m. during the school year;
  • Meta must hide like counts for users under 18 by default;
  • Meta must impose a mandatory usage cap for users under 18 on Facebook and Instagram, not exceeding 90 hours per month.

This framework could become the basis for broader regulatory approaches to limit the harmful impact of social media on teenage users. Compared to preliminary research in Australia showing that a complete ban on social media for teenagers has "almost no effect," these usage restrictions may be more effective.

However, it all comes down to effective detection and Meta's systems' ability to determine each user's age, to truly prevent teenagers from circumventing these parameters.

In this regard, the judge ruled that Meta must take more measures to seek age verification for suspected underage users and delete accounts of users under 13 who are not verified within 30 days.

This remains the key challenge. In Australia, preliminary reports on the effectiveness of the social media ban for teenagers show that most teenagers can bypass age detection systems or continue using social apps without accounts, which still exposes them to a large amount of potentially harmful content.

Any effective approach would need to both restrict unlogged users from accessing such material and implement stricter age checks, possibly through a government-approved universal system applicable to all social media platforms.

But if these systems can be implemented, then the guidelines proposed here could be helpful and may limit harmful usage habits among teenagers.

In response, Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said on X that the company will appeal the ruling and stated that the company remains confident in its record of protecting teenagers online.