TikTok will pay Alabama at least $100 million and introduce stricter time limits, age verification and safety controls for teen users under a settlement.
TikTok agreed on Friday to pay Alabama at least $100 million and enact time limits and other restrictions for teen users, avoiding a trial set to begin Monday in a settlement modelled on Instagram-owner Meta’s recent agreement with US states.
The trial had been set to begin in the southern US state over claims that TikTok misled parents about tools meant to shield children from harmful content. Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall hailed the settlement as “a great day for Alabama parents.”
“Tonight, they can rest easier knowing real protections are in place to shield their children from the dangers of social media addiction. TikTok has agreed to give parents real control over what their kids see and how much time they spend on the app,” he said.
The Money
Under the settlement, TikTok will pay Alabama a minimum of $100 million, due within 45 days, with the potential to rise to as much as $300 million if enough other states reach qualifying settlements with the company within a specified timeframe. Marshall’s office described the deal as a first-in-the-nation settlement.
Alabama’s suit was the latest in a wave of litigation targeting social media companies across the US over the harm their apps allegedly cause young users. In August, Meta agreed to pay $18 billion to settle a sweeping lawsuit brought by US states accusing it of designing Instagram and Facebook to be addictive to children, and Marshall’s office separately secured a $117 million multi-state settlement with Meta and a $12 million agreement with Roblox for school resource officers last month.
What Changes for Teen Users
TikTok’s settlement with Alabama mirrors several safety provisions Meta previously agreed to, including a two-hour daily time limit for teens (with parental controls allowing even tighter restrictions), restricted access from midnight to 6:00 am, and suspended notifications during school hours and overnight.
The agreement also introduces “productive pauses” that interrupt teen users after 15 minutes of continuous use, and again at 60 and 90 minutes, intended to limit endless scrolling. Beyond time restrictions, TikTok will strengthen age verification, ban cosmetic filters for teenagers, set teen accounts to private by default, offer young users a default non-personalised content feed, and add stronger content moderation, including limits on adults’ ability to discover teen accounts and mandatory parental notification of suspicious interactions between teens and adults.
As with Meta’s settlement, the agreement includes a conditional provision to expand the nighttime shutdown window to 10:00 pm–7:00 am, if other platforms also commit to doing the same.
TikTok’s Response
“TikTok’s priority has always been fostering a safe and positive space where people can be creative, discover what they love, and connect with their community,” a company spokesperson said. “This builds on our commitment and core objective to continually enhance our robust safety tools to protect teens.”
More Suits Pending
More than a dozen other states, including California and New York, still have active suits against TikTok. The company has previously settled cases headed for trial, including a Los Angeles lawsuit brought by a young woman and a suit from a Kentucky school district, and separately agreed to a $92 million class-action privacy settlement with US TikTok users, as well as a $400 million settlement with the Department of Justice over child safety and privacy concerns.
Meta, by contrast, has taken its chances in court in some cases, with bruising results. In March, a jury in New Mexico ordered the Facebook and Instagram owner to pay $375 million after finding it had misled the public about the safety of its platforms for children. That same month, a Los Angeles jury found Meta and Google’s YouTube negligent in the case of a 20-year-old woman who said she became hooked on social media as a child, awarding her $6 million.
Going to trial would have exposed TikTok to unprecedented public scrutiny of how it handles safety internally, with company documents and executive testimony potentially aired in open court.
Background on the Case
Alabama originally sued TikTok and its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, in April 2025, alleging the app was engineered to hook young users “just like a sophisticated gambling machine.” The lawsuit had also raised national-security concerns, alleging that ByteDance’s China-based ownership subjected the company to laws requiring cooperation with Chinese intelligence services.
The state later narrowed its case to claims under Alabama’s Deceptive Trade Practices Act, focusing on whether TikTok misrepresented the effectiveness of features such as “Restricted Mode” and “Kids Mode.” Despite TikTok’s assurances that users in that mode should not see mature themes, the accounts were quickly served videos about suicide, self-harm, eating disorders, alcohol and sex, according to the state’s filing.
