A New Mexico jury found Meta liable for failing to safeguard its apps from child predators and awarded $375 million in civil damages. Under a separate agreement with state attorneys general, Meta will use age signals from Apple and Google to assess users’ ages inside those apps.

Key takeaways

  • A New Mexico jury awarded $375 million in civil damages against Meta over child safety in its apps.
  • Gartner estimated U.S. state privacy-related fines at $3.45 billion in 2025.
  • Google’s $391.5 million location-tracking settlement was with 40 state attorneys general.
  • Meta says its age-assurance standard must be independently tested for a false-positive rate no higher than 10%.
  • California’s AB 1043 requires device makers and app stores to verify users’ ages.

Gartner estimated that U.S. states issued $3.45 billion in privacy-related fines in 2025, more than in the preceding five years combined, according to CyberScoop’s report of the estimate. That figure does not include every kind of state remedy: settlements and jury damages arise from different cases and cannot be treated as part of the same fines total.

Disclosures let enforcers compare promises with conduct

California’s first CCPA enforcement action required Sephora to pay $1.2 million over allegations that it failed to disclose the sale of consumer data and honor opt-out signals. Google agreed to a $391.5 million settlement with 40 state attorneys general over allegations that it misled users about whether location tracking had been disabled. In both cases, an attorney general could compare what a user had been told or had selected with what the company’s systems did.

New Mexico had raised a related question about children’s data. In 2018, its attorney general sued over children’s apps, accusing Google and others of violating children’s privacy law; coverage described allegations involving location data and tracking identifiers. The state sued Google again in 2020 over alleged tracking of students using its education products. Both cases asked what a parent’s or school’s understanding could protect if collection and sharing happened elsewhere in the system.

A New Mexico judge ordered changes for underage users

New Mexico’s later child-safety cases reached beyond data collection. Its suit against Snapchat alleged that the service facilitated predators seeking explicit images of children and extorting them. A New Mexico jury found Meta liable under the state’s unfair-practices law for failing to safeguard its apps from child predators and awarded $375 million in civil damages. In a separate reported ruling, a judge ordered Meta to pay $567 million and make changes for underage users after finding that its platforms helped create a public nuisance harming teens.

Meta can reserve for a judgment; the judge’s product order requires its engineers to change the service children use. Whether those changes will work remains to be tested, but revised policy language alone cannot meet the order.

Meta must act on another company’s age signal

Under Meta’s settlement with state attorneys general, its age-verification framework will use “reliable age signals” from operating systems and app stores operated by Apple and Google. Those companies supply a signal outside Meta’s app; Meta decides how to use it inside the service.

Meta also says the agreement requires an independently tested age-assurance standard with a false-positive rate no higher than 10%. That ceiling makes one kind of error testable, but it does not measure every way a child might be treated as an adult. Independent testing must establish which users and conditions were tested. If a signal is uncertain, Meta still has to decide what that user can do in its app. Collecting more identity data to improve the check would create another privacy problem.

Apple’s plans for Texas show what happens on the other side of the handoff. It said it would update its Declared Age Range API and add ways to verify Apple Account users’ ages there. California enacted AB 1043, requiring device makers and app stores to verify user ages. An inaccurate account-level signal could follow a user into an app whose maker did not create it.

State remedies pull one product in different directions

As of January 2024, 13 states had enacted privacy laws, and legislators and privacy experts described industry efforts to weaken state measures. California’s $1.2 million Sephora settlement is a different burden from Texas’s $1.4 billion settlement with Google over allegations involving location tracking and facial-recognition data. A national platform faces a patchwork of claims and remedies, not one U.S. privacy code.

Federal enforcement runs alongside it: the FTC imposed a $7 million penalty and advertising-data restrictions on Cerebral over its data-sharing and other practices. To explain an age check, a platform needs records of what a user selected, what a vendor supplied, and what the app enforced. Those records connect consent to the decisions an app makes from an outside signal.

Frequently asked questions

What age information will Apple and Google actually send to Meta?

The agreement describes “reliable age signals” from operating systems and app stores, but the piece does not identify the underlying data, the format of the signal, or the confidence information Meta will receive.

What happens when an operating-system age signal is uncertain or conflicts with other information?

The agreement does not specify a fallback rule. Meta must decide what access to allow inside its apps when a signal is uncertain, and the piece does not describe how it will resolve conflicts.

Who will independently test Meta’s age-assurance standard, and which users will be included?

The piece identifies neither the tester nor the testing population. It notes that the 10% false-positive ceiling is meaningful only if the tested users and conditions are disclosed.

Has Google announced a corresponding age-signal implementation for Meta?

The evidence establishes that Meta’s settlement contemplates signals from Apple and Google, while Apple has separately said it will update its Declared Age Range API for Texas. It does not describe a specific Google implementation or rollout.

New Mexico AG actions and the age-signal settlement

  • 2018-09-13 — The New Mexico Attorney General sued Google, Twitter’s ad business, AdMob, Fun Kid Racing and other mobile game apps over alleged children’s-privacy-law violations.
  • 2020-02-21 — The New Mexico Attorney General sued Google over allegations that it tracked students using free Chromebooks through G Suite for Education.
  • 2024-09-05 — The New Mexico Attorney General filed a lawsuit against Snapchat alleging that the platform facilitated predators targeting children for explicit images and extortion.
  • 2026-08-28 — Meta’s state-AG settlement described an age-verification framework using “reliable age signals” from Apple- and Google-operated operating systems and app stores.

New Mexico’s $375 million verdict concerned harm inside Meta’s apps. The age check begins one handoff earlier, where Apple or Google passes Meta a signal it must decide how to trust.