TikTok has settled with Alabama for $100 million and immediately imposed stricter safety limits on minors. The company must enforce a two-hour daily cap, block usage during overnight and school hours, and roll out stronger age-verification measures within a year. The settlement also restricts how adults can find minors, requires parental alerts for suspicious adult-teen interactions, and bans cosmetic filters for children statewide. TikTok and ByteDance face up to $300 million more in penalties if they fail to comply.
TikTok Agrees to $100M Alabama Settlement and Immediate Child-Safety Limits
Photo by Jan Woitas/picture alliance via Getty Images
TikTok has agreed to pay Alabama $100 million and immediately implement strict new limits on how minors use the app, resolving a high-profile lawsuit that accused the platform of designing features to keep young users scrolling.
Under the settlement — reached just before jury selection was set to begin — Alabama will receive the $100 million payment within 45 days. TikTok and its parent company ByteDance could face up to an additional $300 million in penalties if they fail to meet the agreement's terms.
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Changes affecting minors in Alabama take effect now. TikTok must enforce a two-hour daily usage cap for underage accounts and block access during overnight hours and school times. The company has up to one year to roll out further measures, including stronger age-verification systems intended to prevent younger users from bypassing safeguards.
Alabama also secured significant limits on how minor accounts can be discovered and monitored: adults will face new restrictions on finding minors' profiles, parents must be notified of "suspicious interactions" between teens and adults, guardians will gain broader controls over their children's activity, and cosmetic filters will be banned for minors statewide.
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"This is very restrictive injunctive relief that's going to require them to change a lot of the policies that we had identified as the culprits in what we call the war on childhood," Katherine Robertson, chief counsel in the Alabama Attorney General's Office, told the BBC.
TikTok said the agreement builds on its existing safety efforts. A company spokesperson said TikTok prioritizes "fostering a safe and positive space where people can be creative, discover what they love, and connect with their community," and described the settlement as reinforcing its ongoing investments in tools to protect teens.
The Alabama deal comes at a pivotal moment for TikTok, one of the world's most popular — and most scrutinized — social platforms. Governments and institutions in the United States, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom and the European Union have placed restrictions on the app over security and data concerns; India banned TikTok outright in 2020. Separately, users in mainland China access ByteDance's domestic app, Douyin.
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TikTok also recently emerged from a U.S. ownership dispute after federal legislation required ByteDance to divest its American operations or face a nationwide ban. A U.S. investor group now has majority control and oversight of TikTok's U.S. data and algorithm, while ByteDance remains a minority owner.
The settlement follows an August agreement between Meta and 52 state attorneys general that centered on youth-safety tools, signaling growing regulatory focus on how social platforms protect younger users. The TikTok deal will be watched closely for how its restrictions are implemented and whether other states pursue similar relief.
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