A New Mexico judge has ruled that Meta must pay another $567 million penalty after the company was found to have failed to protect children and teenagers from online harm on Instagram and Facebook.
The half-billion-dollar penalty comes on top of a March decision ordering Meta to pay $375 million, and the major payout could have major implications for the future of social media.
District court Judge Bryan Biedscheid on Thursday ruled that Meta knowingly overlooked data that indicated its products were addictive for younger users and disregarded evidence showing prolonged use of its platforms led to depression, sleep problems and even eating disorders.
"Regardless of whether it is labelled as an 'addiction or 'problematic use,' the evidence at trial proved that design elements, such as autoplay, infinite scroll, 'like counts,' and push notifications create a product that, particularly for adolescent users, is highly rewarding psychologically and neurochemically," he wrote.
"As a result, for many, it is irresistibly compelling to start scrolling and very difficult to stop or abstain from its use."
Mr Biedscheid ordered the elimination of push notifications from 10pm to 3pm for accounts belonging to under-18s on weekdays during the academic year, and stipulated the enforcement of app-scrolling time limits. Like counts on content, he wrote, must be turned off by default as well.
While he agreed with state prosecutors that features like autoplay and infinite scroll "combine to facilitate addictive or problematic behaviours in adolescent users", he stopped short of demanding changes to those features.
After the ruling, Meta spokesman Andy Stone said that the technology giant would challenge the ruling in a higher court.
"We disagree with the ruling and will appeal," he posted on Meta's social media platform, threads.
"We remain confident in our record of protecting teens online and will continue to defend ourselves against claims that misrepresent the facts."
Broader implications
From the earliest days of personal computing, companies have sought to find ways to keep users from getting bored and - importantly - to spend more time on their digital devices.
In 1982, IBM employee Walter Doherty wrote a research paper in which he discussed how fast computers should be in responding to, processing and displaying key strokes to keep users interested - a concept that became known as the Doherty Threshold.
There wasn't much concern about the potential for addiction at the time - but the proliferation of smartphones, wireless service and apps like Instagram, TikTok and Facebook, has given rise to fears over possible mental health effects on younger users.
Debate has ensued around the world and, for the most part, social media companies have been reluctant to address the core concerns of parents and legislators.
In recent years, however, governments have started to step in and fill the regulatory vacuum that was largely untouched since the debut of Facebook in 2004.
Australia was among the first country to limit the use of social media apps among young people, and the UK recently announced plans to do something similar.
The UAE became the first country in the Arab world to announce that children under 15 would soon not be allowed to use social media.
In the US, while there hasn't been much broad support at federal level among legislators for introducing a nationwide ban or policy, several states have sought to make changes on their own.
Meanwhile, various civil and criminal lawsuits, like the Meta case, have been filed against social media companies in the US, aimed at forcing the tech sector to make changes.
In May, a California jury found both Meta and Alphabet-owned YouTube liable after a woman said she became addicted to the companies' social apps at a young age.
Last month, a Florida teenager settled claims against TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube, after accusing them of creating addictive platforms harmful to children.
And last week, the families of four teenagers who died by suicide filed a suit against Meta, TikTok, Snapchat, accusing them of subjecting their children to “years of escalating harms” that eventually resulted in their deaths.
