The U.S. Surgeon General issued an advisory recommending changes that the New Mexico Department of Justice is already seeking in its ongoing child safety trial against Meta, according to a May 22 statement released by the department.
The advisory, titled “Surgeon General’s Warnings on the Harms of Screen Use,” highlights risks associated with excessive screen time and social media use for children. The document was admitted as evidence in the second phase of New Mexico’s trial against Meta, which is expected to conclude on Friday, May 22. After securing a jury verdict in March, the state is now seeking injunctive relief that would require Meta to implement significant changes to its platforms and practices to improve child safety.
Both the Surgeon General’s recommendations and New Mexico’s requests include implementing warning labels about potential mental health harms for teens, supporting transparency and independent research regarding screen use effects on children, ensuring default privacy settings for minors, preventing adults from contacting underage users without connections, enforcing robust age verification methods, removing addictive features such as infinite scroll and autoplay for minors’ accounts, disabling notifications during school and sleep hours, hiding like and share counts by default for underage users, and providing effective parental controls with high privacy standards.
The New Mexico Attorney General serves as the chief legal officer for the state of New Mexico and provides services across all counties. The office advances justice through civil litigation and criminal prosecutions while coordinating with local law enforcement agencies for public safety efforts. It also seeks to protect consumers, support law enforcement, uphold the rule of law, foster trust and accountability via community outreach initiatives according to the official website.
The outcome of this phase may determine whether Meta will be required to adopt these proposed measures aimed at safeguarding minors online.
