TikTok agrees to $100M settlement with Alabama over child safety
Endless scrolling will come to an end.
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- TikTok will pay Alabama $100 million, with penalties up to $300 million if changes are late.
- The settlement adds teen protections, including time limits, nighttime restrictions, and pauses during long sessions.
- TikTok must improve age checks and make teen feeds chronological instead of personalized.
- TikTok admits no wrongdoing, and the Alabama rules may expand across the US and Europe.
Key Takeaways by nexos.ai, reviewed by Cybernews staff.
TikTok has settled with Attorney General Steve Marshall of the US state of Alabama in a case over alleged addictive design.
TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance, have agreed to pay $100 million to the state of Alabama within 45 days. The amount of the settlement could rise to $300 million if TikTok fails to implement certain changes on time.
In addition to the payment, TikTok has agreed to implement a set of additional safety features to protect children when they use the platform. These include a 2-hour daily time limit, pauses after 15 minutes of continuous use, restricted access during nighttime, and stronger content moderation provisions.
On top of that, TikTok needs to find a more effective way to verify the ages of young users. Also, teen users can no longer use cosmetic filters, and TikTok is no longer allowed to show a personalized timeline, but only a chronological feed for teen users. Lastly, parental controls have to become more user-friendly.
“This is 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. We’ve said from day one that our number one goal was to stand up for Alabamians when they are being harmed, and today, we did exactly that,” Alabama Attorney General Marshall said in a press release.
The lawsuit was scheduled to go to trial on Monday, meaning that Alabama would have been the first state to bring its claims against TikTok to trial. The settlement states that TikTok hasn’t been found guilty of any wrongdoing or liability of any kind.
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Strictly speaking, the conditions of the settlement only apply to TikTok users in Alabama. But in all likelihood, the platform will implement the changes across the entire US and Europe.
In August 2026, TikTok, ByteDance, and the US Department of Justice reached a $400 million settlement for violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), which prohibits website operators from knowingly collecting and using personal information of children under the age of 13, unless they’ve obtained consent from their parents.
Earlier this year, the European Commission found TikTok guilty of adding addictive design elements in its app, such as infinite scrolling, autoplay, and push notifications, which is a breach of the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA).
TikTok faces fines of up to 6% of its global annual turnover if it fails to make changes, which is estimated at 10s of billions of euros.
