Meta Faces $1.4 Trillion Penalty Demand from Four U.S. States over Youth‑Addiction Claims

Four U.S. states—California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey—have asked a federal court to impose roughly $1.4 trillion in penalties on Meta Platforms, alleging that Facebook and Instagram were deliberately engineered to addict minors and that the company misled the public about the platforms’ safety. Meta responded that the figure is “unsupported by the evidence” and called it “a sanction of that size has no analog in the history of consumer protection enforcement.”

The damages calculation, kept under seal, multiplies the estimated number of affected teens by state‑defined fine amounts. The amount is close to Meta’s market valuation of about $1.5 trillion. The case will be heard in August before U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in Oakland, California, and will also address federal COPPA violations alleged by 29 other states. A separate trial for 14 states is slated for February 2027. Earlier, a New Mexico jury awarded $375 million after finding Meta had misled consumers. Meta maintains that “social‑media addiction” is not a recognized psychiatric condition and therefore its statements that the platforms are not addictive cannot be false.