Meta Considers Halting Service in New Mexico Amid Legal Dispute Over Child Safety Concerns

SANTA FE, N.M. – The social media giant Meta has put forward the possibility of withdrawing its services from New Mexico. This comes in reaction to state prosecutors urging for significant modifications to Meta’s platforms, such as Instagram, with the goal of enhancing the mental health and safety of young users.

This development arises as a legal showdown looms, with a bench trial scheduled for next week to address allegations that Meta constitutes a public nuisance. This trial is the second phase of an ongoing case, which has already seen a jury impose $375 million in civil penalties, finding that Meta knowingly endangered children’s mental health while failing to disclose its awareness of child sexual exploitation occurring on its platforms.

Prosecutors are pushing for the court to mandate a series of reforms on child accounts across social media. These proposed changes focus on curbing addictive features, enhancing age verification, and preventing child sexual exploitation by implementing default privacy settings and increased oversight.

Meanwhile, Meta’s leadership has consistently highlighted their ongoing efforts to bolster child safety and address issues of compulsive social media usage. The company argues that it is being unfairly targeted, as there are numerous other apps that teenagers frequently use.

In a court document revealed on Thursday, Meta declared that meeting a proposed requirement for 99% accuracy in age verification to ensure users are at least 13 years old, along with other stipulated demands, is not feasible for the company.

“As a practical matter, this requirement effectively requires Meta to shut down its services — for all users in the state — or else comply with impossible obligations,” Meta said in the filing.

Such a shutdown across a population of 2.1 million residents in New Mexico could silence personal communication on Meta’s immensely popular platforms, which also include Facebook and WhatsApp, and also impact their use for commercial advertising.

By withdrawing from New Mexico, Meta would satisfy any concerns about harm to children, but the message could appear intentionally hostile and might lead to unintended consequences, said Eric Goldman, codirector of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University School of Law in California.

Goldman noted that Canadian authorities accused Facebook in 2023 of putting profits over safety after the platform blocked local news content during record-setting wildfires and evacuations. Facebook was responding to a newly enacted law that requires tech giants to pay publishers for linking to or otherwise repurposing their content online.

A Los Angeles jury last month found both Meta and YouTube liable for harms to children using their services, validated longstanding concerns about the dangers of social media.

New Mexico’s case against Meta is the first to reach trial among more that 40 state attorneys general who have filed suit against the company on claims it contributes to a mental health crisis among young people. Most are pursuing remedies in U.S. federal court.

“I highly doubt that they’re going to be willing and able to turn the lights off for their product all over the country,” New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez said in an online news conference.

Torrez disputed Meta’s argument that proposed changes are impractical, describing “before times” in an ever-evolving social media landscape when “we didn’t have infinite scroll and we didn’t have auto-play.” Torrez, a Democrat running for reelection to a second term in November, said he won’t be “turning a blind eye to exploited children in the state of New Mexico because people have an advertising contract.”

Beyond the U.S., other countries have implemented — or are planning — a bevy of restrictions on children’s online activities, ranging from social media bans to requiring younger teens to link their accounts to a parent’s. New Mexico also is seeking child-guardian links in the suit against Meta, as well as a court-supervised child safety monitor to track improvements over time.

Goldman said there are some countries that Facebook “doesn’t directly support in part because it’s just not worth it to provide that custom instance.”

“The cost of maintaining the separate service is greater than any value from that territory,” he said. “And that could be the case with New Mexico as well.”