TikTok to Pay Alabama $100 Million in Teen Safety Settlement

TikTok has agreed to pay the state of Alabama at least $100 million and implement a series of safety measures for teenage users, settling a lawsuit that was set to go to trial on Monday.

Alabama filed the suit in 2025, alleging that the platform's design harmed the mental well-being of young people. The state argued that TikTok's "addictive properties" — particularly an algorithm that curates highly specific content for users — were harmful to children and that the company was aware of those harms.

Under the settlement, TikTok will make several platform-level changes for teen users in Alabama. Teens will have the option to select a non-personalized content feed. The platform will also bar cosmetic procedure filters for teens, impose a two-hour daily time limit, and ban nighttime use from midnight to 6 a.m. Young users in Alabama will be prompted to take a "productive pause" after 15 minutes of continuous use, and again at 60 and 90 minutes.

The agreement also outlines more robust parental controls, stronger age verification measures, and stricter content moderation protocols. Teen accounts will be set to private by default.

In addition to the platform changes, TikTok will pay Alabama $100 million in restitution and remediation, which will likely fund youth mental health services and other programs. If enough other states reach qualifying settlements with TikTok within a specific time frame, Alabama could receive up to an additional $183.8 million.

The changes are broadly similar to those Meta agreed to make this summer when it settled comparable claims brought by nearly every state, including Alabama. Meta had urged TikTok and YouTube to adopt similar standards, but TikTok had not publicly responded.

Katherine Robertson, chief counsel in the Alabama Attorney General's office and the Republican nominee for the state's next attorney general, acknowledged the overlap with the Meta agreement. "There's been a war on childhood coming from a million different directions," she said. "We recognize that parents and youth are fighting a battle against a bunch of different platforms. They're manipulating kids to get addicted to their product, essentially."

A spokesperson for the TikTok USDS Joint Venture said the company'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. This builds on our commitment and core objective to continually enhance our robust safety tools to protect teens."

Alabama would have been the first state to present its claims against TikTok to a jury. TikTok has previously settled several similar lawsuits filed by individuals before trial, including in a landmark social media addiction case in Los Angeles earlier this year, where a jury found that YouTube and Meta designed their platforms to hook young users without regard for their well-being. In August, TikTok also reached a $400 million settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice, ending a 2024 lawsuit alleging violations of federal children's privacy laws.