This week marks the start of two key trials against Meta that could change how social media platforms operate.
The first of these lawsuits was filed against Meta and its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, by New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez back in December 2023. The lawsuit claims that social media platforms like Meta’s Instagram have become a breeding ground for sexual predators looking to exploit children, following an undercover operation by the attorney general’s office.
Meta executives “created a space for predators to target and exploit children, and then they lied about it, they misled consumers,” Torrez told CNBC on Monday morning. “They are responsible for deceptive conduct and creating a dangerous product that has placed a lot of kids at risk, not only in New Mexico but all over the world.”
“One of the shocking revelations that was unsealed just on the eve of trial is that by their own account, one of their own researchers determined that nearly half a million cases of child sexual exploitation were occurring on their platforms every day,” Torrez said.
Per the New York Post, former Meta scientist Malia Andrus (who now works for OpenAI) said in internal emails that sexual predators target roughly 500,000 victims a day “in English markets only,” and that the true situation is likely even worse. Andrus also allegedly wrote that she was “actually scared of the ramifications” of the reach sexual predators got with the platform.
Torrez’s office is asking Meta to: change its algorithm and product design to ensure that kids don’t connect with predators on the platform, institute age verification, and provide consumers with full disclosures of potential harm and damage from using the platforms.
The office also filed a complaint back in 2024 against Snapchat for allegedly facilitating sextortion and opened investigations into the risks of AI chatbots.
“This is by no means the last trial that we are going to initiate,” Torrez said.
The New Mexico case is only one of two legal headwinds Meta is struggling with this week.
Both Meta and Google were taken to the Los Angeles County Supreme Court over the addictive nature of their social media platforms, Instagram and YouTube.
TikTok and Snap were also initially named in the lawsuit, but both settled ahead of trial.
In the Los Angeles case, a now 20-year-old identified by her initials “KGM” argues that deliberate design choices like infinite scrolling and face-altering filters deployed in these social media platforms got her addicted from an early age, and worsened mental health issues like depression, anxiety, body dysmorphia, and thoughts of self-harm.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is expected to testify in the coming weeks.
“The allegations in these complaints are simply not true,” Google spokesperson José Castaneda told Gizmodo. “Providing young people with a safer, healthier experience has always been core to our work. In collaboration with youth, mental health and parenting experts, we built services and policies to provide young people with age-appropriate experiences, and parents with robust controls.”
The defendants will likely argue that KGM’s declining mental health was due to family issues and that her mother should have taken her phone away if the social media platforms were affecting her so much, KGM’s lawyer Mark Lanier said in court, per CNN.
Indeed, Meta claimed in a press release last month that social media is just a “convenient target” and there are many other factors that “affect teens’ well-being,” such as “academic pressure, family dynamics, and school safety.”
Although that might be true, to some extent, it’s not the general view of experts.
The American Academy of Pediatrics released a report last month arguing that the harmful effects of engagement and commercialization-focused social media design features (like user profiling, autoplay, and algorithmic recommender systems) amplify the dangerous sides of the internet and harm kids. The effects are so pervasive that a parent can only do so much with screen time limits, and the responsibility should instead fall on tech companies and the government, the report claims.
The Los Angeles lawsuit is defined as a “bellwether” case, aka one that is representative of a large pool of lawsuits against these social media platforms, and will be a test case for any future lawsuits. There are roughly 1,500 lawsuits against social media companies similar to KGM’s case against Meta.
At the heart of both the New Mexico and Los Angeles lawsuits is Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects free speech on the internet and relieves the operators of these platforms from any liability for stuff posted by third parties. In the Los Angeles case, Instagram and YouTube lawyers have claimed that KGM’s mental health issues were triggered by third-party posts, while her lawyers argue that it was the deliberately addictive design features, like Instagram’s infinite scroll and YouTube’s autoplay, that exacerbated the harm.
If the judge rules against the big tech giants, it will clear a path for similar lawsuits against these social media giants that were previously protected by Section 230.
The two trials come in the midst of a global shift in sentiment regarding social media and children. There is yet another bellwether trial set for later this year, this time filed by school districts against social media platforms.
On the company’s earnings call last month, Meta executives said the company might experience material loss this year due to “scrutiny on youth-related issues.”
While legal headaches gain steam in the U.S., the backlash has turned to regulatory action elsewhere. As of last week, at least 15 governments across Europe were contemplating social media bans for under-16s inspired by the landmark ban Australia enacted in December 2025.
While a federal social media ban seems unlikely due to the Trump administration’s close ties to Silicon Valley, the regulatory momentum abroad, combined with any legal wins stateside, could lead to increased scrutiny at the state level.
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