Judge Orders Meta to Pay $567M for Youth Mental Health Care — $420M of It Treatment

A New Mexico court found Meta's platforms are a "significant contributing cause" of a teen mental health crisis and set a five-year abatement fund, on top of $375 million a jury already ordered. Meta says it will appeal.

A New Mexico judge has ordered Meta to pay $567 million into a fund meant to abate what he found to be a public nuisance created by the company's social media services, according to Ars Technica's account of the order. The money is separate from, and in addition to, the $375 million in civil penalties a jury ordered the company to pay earlier in the same case.

The case began in 2023, when New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez sued Meta in a Santa Fe County court. It was tried in two parts. Phase 1, before a jury, covered the state's Unfair Practices Act claims and the resulting civil penalties; in March 2026 that jury found Meta's platforms do not effectively protect children from exploitation and that the company misled parents about the safety of its apps. Phase 2 was a bench trial on the state's request for abatement of a public nuisance. Judge Bryan Biedscheid issued the $567 million judgment in that second phase.

What the money is for

The order divides the fund four ways: $420 million for treatment, $90 million for screening and assessment, $33 million for awareness and prevention, and $24 million for other costs. Those four figures add to the full $567 million.

Two limits in the ruling brought the number below what the state asked for. Biedscheid rejected an expert witness's proposal that Meta pay to build new community-based health centers, writing that "requiring Meta to fund entire new physical facilities goes beyond what remedies are necessary to abate current harm," while adding that "any abatement fund must include funding for appropriate clinical or other behavioral health programs and professionals." He also set the funding period at five years rather than the 15 the state sought, finding 15 years' worth excessive. Because other social media companies share responsibility for the harm, the judge weighed Meta's market share in arriving at the amount.

The findings behind the number

Biedscheid concluded that "Meta is a cause of and has substantially contributed to a public nuisance in New Mexico and is required to abate that public nuisance," citing evidence of a youth mental health crisis in the state that includes increased rates of suicide and eating disorders. He tied part of that to problematic social media use worsened by "Meta implement[ing] platform features that were designed to maximize engagement and time spent on its platforms, for all users and for teenage users in particular," per the Ars Technica report. The harms he identified include sexual exploitation, interference with education and adverse mental health outcomes, with sexual exploitation described as cases in which "an online predator threatens or coerces a child for financial gain, typically involving a threat to expose nude or exploitative imagery of that child."

Torrez called the ruling "a landmark victory" and said the "case has always been about protecting children, standing up for families, and making sure that one of the world's largest technology companies cannot profit from practices that endanger young people without consequence."

Meta said it will appeal. "We work hard to keep people safe on our platforms and have been transparent about the challenges of identifying and removing bad actors and harmful content," the company told media outlets. "We remain confident in our record of protecting teens online and will continue to defend ourselves against claims that misrepresent the facts." For scale on the judgment: Meta reported $60.8 billion in revenue and $15.85 billion in net income in the second quarter of 2026.

Two questions the reporting does not answer: who administers the fund, and how the four categories are disbursed once the appeal is resolved. The order arises from a New Mexico suit and addresses harm in that state; nothing in the account describes any payment reaching families or clinics elsewhere.