TikTok agrees to $100 million settlement with Alabama on teen safety

TikTok and its Chinese parent company ByteDance agreed to pay Alabama at least $100 million and impose new usage limits on teen users, settling the state's lawsuit days before a scheduled trial. The deal, announced on Friday, requires a two-hour daily time limit for teenagers, pauses after 15 minutes of use, and stricter age checks in Alabama.jang.com.pk

The settlement is TikTok's first with any state over social media's effect on teen well-being. Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall filed the suit last year, and at least 27 other states plus Washington, D.C. have brought similar cases. The agreement averts a trial that had been set to open Monday in Montgomery state court and run two to three weeks.nypost.com

What the settlement requires

Under the settlement, Alabama receives a minimum of $100 million, due within 45 days. The payment could rise to $300 million if 40 other attorneys general sign similar agreements within a specified timeframe, according to the settlement. TikTok also must adopt further restrictions if rivals Snap, Google and Meta make comparable changes to their teen settings.

Teen users in Alabama face a two-hour daily cap, pauses after 15 minutes of continuous use, and overnight and school-hour restrictions. Parents gain tools to moderate their children's usage, and TikTok will limit children's accounts from being discovered by adults and notify parents of suspicious interactions between teen and adult users. A ban on cosmetic filters for children also applies.

Time limits and usage blocks take effect immediately, but TikTok has up to a year to implement other changes, including age verification measures. Katherine Robertson, chief counsel in the Alabama Attorney General's office, said of the deal: "We're very pleased." Many measures follow a framework set by an August settlement between Meta and 52 state attorneys general.

How the state made its case

Alabama's lawsuit claimed TikTok's endless video stream makes it the most addictive platform and that its algorithm pushes young users toward increasingly intense content on violence and self-harm, contributing to a teen mental health crisis and causing emergency room visits for self-harm in the state to "skyrocket." The state also alleged TikTok traps children in filter bubbles feeding harmful material.

The state further alleged TikTok lets users self-report ages and allows people to view videos without an account, sidestepping age questions while still collecting viewing data. That lack of effective age restriction, Alabama argued, makes features like "Kids Mode" useless. The lawsuit accused TikTok of falsely claiming it limits sexual and violent content to secure safe-for-teens app store ratings from Google, Apple and Microsoft.

TikTok has said it designed its platform with teen safety as a key priority and argued that Section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act shields platforms from liability over user-generated content. A TikTok US operations spokesperson said the deal "builds on our commitment and core objective to continually enhance our robust safety tools to protect teens."rappler.com

What other states have done

Last month, Meta reached a $17.1 billion settlement with 47 states, Washington, D.C. and US territories, without admitting wrongdoing, and conditioned $5 billion of that payout on TikTok, Snap and YouTube adopting its teen-access terms. TikTok faces thousands of additional lawsuits by individuals, school districts and municipalities; Meta Platforms, Snap and Alphabet's YouTube are co-defendants in many.

With this deal, TikTok has settled all cases selected for trial against it, including claims by five young people and a Kentucky school district. The changes apply only in Alabama, and major platform changes could prove difficult to implement state by state. The $100 million payment is due to Alabama within 45 days of the settlement.