TikTok agreed to pay Alabama at least $100 million and enact time limits and other restrictions on teen users, avoiding a trial with a settlement that was inspired by Instagram owner Meta’s recent settlement with U.S. states. Alabama described it as a “first-in-the-nation settlement” with a state in the wide-ranging litigation over social media’s effect on teen well-being. harmful content. TikTok’s agreement with Alabama reflects safety provisions agreed to by Meta, including a two-hour daily time limit for teens, restricted access from midnight to 6 a.m., and blackout of notifications during school hours. It will also strengthen age verification, ban teen beauty filters, and offer young users a non-personalized content feed. Attorney General Steve Marshall praised Friday’s agreement as “a great day for Alabama parents.” He said: “Tonight, you can rest easy knowing that there are real protections in place to protect your children from the dangers of social media addiction.” Under the agreement, TikTok will send $100 million to Alabama and could possibly pay up to $300 million in total if 40 other attorneys general sign similar agreements with the company within a specific time frame. The Alabama lawsuit was the latest in a wave of litigation targeting social media companies across the United States over the alleged harm their apps cause to young users. In August, Meta agreed to pay $18 billion to settle a wide-ranging lawsuit brought by U.S. states that accuse it of designing Instagram and Facebook to addict children. Additionally, the Alabama deal includes a conditional restriction that Meta also agreed to: extending the nightly shutdown period from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. if other platforms also agree to do the same. “TikTok’s priority has always been to foster a safe, 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 goal to continually improve our robust safety tools to protect teens,” the spokesperson added. More than a dozen other states, including California and New York, still have lawsuits against TikTok. and the owner of Instagram will pay $375 million after discovering it had misled the public about the safety of its children’s platforms. That same month, a Los Angeles jury found that Meta and Google’s YouTube were negligent in the case of a 20-year-old woman who said she got hooked on social media as a child, awarding her $6 million. Going to trial would have exposed TikTok to unprecedented public scrutiny over how it handles security, with company documents and executive testimony potentially aired in open court. It originally sued TikTok and its Chinese parent company ByteDance in April 2025, alleging that the app was designed to hook young users “like a sophisticated gaming machine.” The state later narrowed its case to claims under Alabama’s Deceptive Trade Practices Act, focusing on whether TikTok misrepresented the effectiveness of features like “Restricted Mode” and “Kids Mode.” stores run by Google, Apple and Microsoft and misleading users about the Chinese government’s access to American users’ data. TikTok said it designed its platform with the safety of teens as a key priority and argued that Section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act protects online platforms from liability for user-generated content. With Agence France-Presse and Reuters
