A Court Fined Meta $942 Million for Failing Kids. Adults Will Pay in Privacy.

Meta has been ordered to pay $942 million after losing a landmark child-safety case in New Mexico, and the consequences could eventually reach far beyond Facebook and Instagram.^[1]

The total combines $375 million in civil penalties with a new $567 million abatement fund. Meta says it will appeal.^[2]

But buried in the court's 68-page ruling is another consequence for internet users: Meta needs to get much better at figuring out how old you are.

The judge ordered the company to strengthen age checks on Facebook and Instagram, including requiring proof of age from some suspected underage users. Similar pressure is already building elsewhere, with governments requiring age checks at the app store, social media, and website level.

Answering that question can mean collecting information from adults, too.

Meta's child-safety case now comes with a $942 million bill

In March, a New Mexico jury found Meta liable for misleading users about the safety of Facebook and Instagram, finding 75,000 consumer-protection violations and assessing the maximum $5,000 penalty for each.

On August 6, Chief Judge Bryan Biedscheid ordered Meta to deposit another $567 million into a five-year abatement fund. Of that, $420 million is earmarked for treatment, with the rest going toward screening, prevention, coordination, and evaluation programs.

The court also ordered changes to how Facebook and Instagram operate for young New Mexico users. Meta must maintain protections including restrictions on unsolicited adult contact, limits on notifications, hidden "like" counts by default, and a combined 90-hour monthly usage limit for users under 18.

But one section of the order may have much bigger implications for online privacy.

"Age verification is the key to making Meta's platforms safe for adolescents," Biedscheid wrote.

Meta must improve its age-assurance systems, develop an AI model for detecting users under 13, and proactively request proof of age when it believes a Facebook or Instagram account belongs to someone under 13. Accounts that don't verify within 30 days can be marked for deletion.

If Meta thinks someone is under 18 but can't determine their exact age, the court says it must treat that person as a minor until they verify otherwise.

Companies need your IDs

That's the central problem with online age restrictions. Websites can't reliably give children one experience and adults another unless they can distinguish between them.

The New Mexico ruling itself recognizes this problem. Biedscheid concluded that requiring young users to obtain identification would create an unreasonable barrier and that federal children's privacy law limits some of the information Meta can collect from children.

Instead, he pointed toward broader solutions, including app stores or phone providers supplying age information to platforms — approaches the court could not order because those companies weren't parties to the case.

In May, the company called for age verification at the app store or operating-system level, arguing that apps could receive a user's age information from one centralized source instead of individually verifying users.

"The fact is, all youth safety laws require knowing people's ages," Meta wrote in the post.

As All About Cookies recently reported, Google's Play Age Signals system allows apps to receive an age range or verification status without requiring every developer to individually collect an ID or selfie.

Texas already requires age checks

Texas's App Store Accountability Act requires app marketplaces such as Apple's App Store and Google Play to verify whether users are under 13, 13–15, 16–17, or adults.

Apple has already built infrastructure to comply. Its developer documentation says apps can receive a user's age category as well as a signal indicating how the age was verified, which could include a credit card or government ID.

Texas isn't alone, either. Age verification laws are spreading in the U.S. and around the world.

Meanwhile, Reuters reports that more than 40 states and over 1,300 school districts have filed public-nuisance lawsuits involving social media companies. Meta also faces another federal trial involving claims from 29 states over its treatment of young users.

Age verification without the ID handoff

An age check does not automatically mean uploading your driver's license. Companies are experimenting with several ways to determine age, including:

• Government-issued identification
• Credit card information
• Facial age estimation
• AI analysis of account activity
• Existing account or device information
• Age-range signals supplied by an app store or operating system

Meta, for example, says it may require users it suspects are misrepresenting their age to provide an ID or use facial age-estimation technology.

A system that only tells an app "this person is over 18" reveals far less than sending a driver's license directly to dozens of websites. Facial age estimation, meanwhile, can involve submitting an image of your face to software designed to analyze your features.

If you are asked to complete one of these checks, it's worth understanding how facial recognition and biometric systems handle your data and whether the company stores your image after verification.

They might need your location, too

Australia's eSafety Commissioner, for example, says location information can help platforms determine whether someone is an Australian resident covered by its social media minimum-age rules.

Its regulatory guidance discusses commercial geolocation tools capable of checking IP addresses, DNS requests, and device fingerprints to determine whether someone may be masking their location with a VPN.

A VPN can hide your real IP address, but it doesn't necessarily make you invisible to age-assurance systems. Platforms may rely on other account, device, payment, or verification signals as well.

The privacy tradeoff

There is broad public support for keeping children away from inappropriate content online. An All About Cookies survey found that 72% of respondents supported stricter age-verification rules for social media.

The harder question is how to do that without building systems that require everyone else to prove who they are.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation warns that age-assurance systems can require sensitive information ranging from government IDs to facial scans and other personal data, potentially reducing online anonymity and creating new stores of information that need to be protected.

There are more privacy-preserving approaches. Systems can perform age estimation on a device, delete verification data after use, or provide apps with only an age range instead of a person's identity.

But Meta's $942 million New Mexico judgment makes the financial stakes increasingly clear. Regulators and courts want tech companies to know when they're dealing with children.

The unanswered privacy question is how much the rest of us will have to reveal so they can find out.