Social work research recently played a role in a landmark legal case examining the responsibility of social media platforms to protect children from online exploitation.
Dr. Jennifer O’Brien, an associate professor and researcher at the University of Texas at Arlington School of Social Work, served as an expert witness in a case brought by the state of New Mexico against Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram. Along with social work as a field, O’Brien also represented the UTA School of Social Work, a higher education leader ranked among the top 3% for research productivity and the third-largest social work program in the country.
At the trial-court level, a jury imposed $375 million in civil penalties after finding that Meta violated New Mexico’s Unfair Practices Act. In a second phase of the case, the court ordered Meta to deposit $567 million into a five-year abatement fund and implement court-supervised reforms, bringing the combined financial orders to $942 million.
Meta disputes the judgment and has said it will appeal.
A photo of the New Mexico State Flag waving in the wind. (Courtesy Photo)
O’Brien explained that the case's significance extends far beyond the financial penalties and that it highlighted the dangers children face in online spaces.
“One of the biggest pieces of this case is that it recognizes online child safety as more than just a matter of individual choices or parental monitoring, which is how it's been talked about in the past,” she said.
The case examined Meta’s public representations, product design, reporting processes and enforcement practices, including whether the company’s platforms contributed to harms against children and teenagers.
O’Brien said the ruling represents an important shift in how responsibility for online safety is considered.
“This is a really important case because it broadens the frame from individual behavior alone to how digital environments are designed and governed. It may influence how courts, policymakers and platforms think about harm, responsibility and accountability,” she said.
The ruling also includes measures intended to reduce risks to children, including restrictions on connections between adults and minors, improvements to reporting systems, stronger human review, and enhanced protections related to sextortion and policy-violating images containing nudity.
O’Brien’s testimony drew on her own scholarship and the broader evidence base concerning technology-facilitated sexual abuse. The court’s written findings cited her testimony regarding its estimated prevalence in New Mexico, its potentially long-lasting psychological effects, and gaps in the resources available to respond.
Of the $567 million abatement fund, $420 million is allocated to treatment services addressing social-media-related harms among children and adolescents.
Although the judgment applies directly to New Mexico and remains subject to appellate review, the case may inform broader legal and policy debates about the responsibilities of technology companies to protect young users.
O’Brien’s research focuses on the experiences and harms associated with online sexual exploitation of children. She explained that legal and institutional responses have struggled to keep pace with technology and the ways children can be contacted and harmed.
“Technology has outpaced our legal response and our law enforcement response. It’s also outpacing parental response,” she said.
“Something doesn’t have to happen face to face to be a serious form of sexual abuse. Technology-facilitated victimization can be persistent and live in perpetuity. Images and communications may be copied, recirculated or reintroduced long after the initial incident, creating the potential for distinctive and enduring psychological harm.”
O’Brien’s history in research and academia poised her as uniquely specialized for her position as an expert witness on this case, beginning her academic journey by receiving a Bachelor of Science in Psychology from the University of Texas at Austin, going on to receive a Master of Social Work from Smith College and finally achieving her PhD in Social Work from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Her research interests led her to study the psychological effects of sexual crimes against children, trends in law enforcement response to sex crimes, and the evaluation of programs in place for victims of sex crimes and trafficking, among other areas.
Serving as an expert witness gave O’Brien an opportunity to see research used directly in a legal proceeding. She described this connection as meaningful.
“Researchers often publish findings, and we hope that the work will eventually reach practitioners or policymakers, and this was really a rare opportunity,” she said. “I felt a responsibility to honor the trust that survivors and families place in researchers by representing their experiences accurately, respectfully and without claiming more than the evidence can support.”
Dr. Jennifer O'Brien poses for a photo. (Courtesy Photo)
O’Brien emphasized that she did not view the outcome as a personal victory. Instead, she sees her role as helping the court understand research.
“My role was to help the court understand what the research said as clearly and as candidly as I could, what the research does not say, and why that distinction is important in making decisions that can impact real lives,” she said.
As a social worker, O’Brien brought a perspective that connects individual experiences of harm with the family, community, institutional and policy environments in which those experiences occur.
“Social work helps us understand how individual harms are shaped by families, communities, institutions, policies and technologies. Using evidence to help make those connections visible in court was incredibly powerful,” she said. “We think about micro and macro social work being separate, but they’re not. They are deeply connected.”
In many instances, social workers act as a bridge between organizations, asking questions many overlook. Social workers provide key services for victims, connect them with resources and advocate for their needs while linking professionals in other practices and professions.
O’Brien explained that protecting children online will require more than any single court ruling. Parents, caregivers, schools, law enforcement and technology companies have roles to play.
“Parents absolutely have responsibilities, but they don’t possess the platform’s data, and cannot carry the full burden of platform safety,” she said. “They don’t have the engineers, the recommendation systems, the detection tools, or the enforcement capacity. The responsibility is shared, but it is not interchangeable.”
For O’Brien, the case demonstrates the potential for social work research to move beyond academic settings and contribute directly to decisions affecting real lives.