TikTok Agrees to $100 Million Settlement With Alabama Over Youth Addiction Lawsuit

TikTok has agreed to pay the state of Alabama a minimum of $100 million to settle allegations that its application was deliberately engineered to keep teenagers and children addicted to social media.

The settlement, reported by Engadget (https://www.engadget.com/2269822/tiktok-will-pay-alabama-100-million-to-settle-social-media-addiction-lawsuit/), resolves a lawsuit filed last year against TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance, just ahead of a trial scheduled for next week. The agreement marks TikTok's first settlement with a U.S. state regarding youth addiction claims.

Under the terms of the agreement, TikTok must implement a suite of safety features and usage constraints for underage users. These measures include a default two-hour daily time limit, additional parental controls allowing guardians to restrict time further, limits on infinite scrolling, and curbs on overnight access. TikTok must also ban beauty filters for younger users and provide an option for a non-personalized content feed.

Failure to enact these platform changes could increase TikTok's total settlement payout to Alabama to as much as $300 million.

The Alabama resolution arrives as TikTok continues to contest broader legal challenges across the country, including lawsuits filed in 2024 by more than a dozen other states alleging addictive platform mechanics targeted at minors. The mandated platform changes mirror safeguards adopted by Meta as part of an $18 billion settlement resolving similar youth addiction claims across 47 states.

The agreement follows an earlier $400 million settlement TikTok reached with the U.S. Department of Justice in August to resolve claims under federal children's privacy laws, following structural adjustments in January that placed the app's U.S. entity under non-Chinese investors.