TikTok has agreed to pay Alabama $100m and implement time limits and other restrictions for teenage users, avoiding a trial with a settlement modelled on Meta’s recent agreement with US states. The deal, described by Alabama as a 'first-in-the-nation settlement,' comes after the state alleged TikTok misled parents about tools meant to shield children from harmful content.

The settlement includes provisions such as a two-hour daily time limit for teens, restricted access from midnight to 6am, and suspending notifications during school hours. It also strengthens age verification, bans beauty filters for teenagers, and offers young users a non-personalised content feed. Alabama’s attorney general, Steve Marshall, praised the agreement as 'a great day for Alabama parents,' stating that parents could now 'rest easier knowing real protections are in place to shield their children from the dangers of social media addiction.'

Under the terms of the settlement, TikTok will send $100m to Alabama and could potentially pay up to $300m in total if 40 other attorneys general sign similar agreements with the company within a specified timeframe. The deal includes a conditional restriction that Meta also agreed to: expanding the night-time shutdown period to 10pm to 7am if other platforms also commit to do the same. A TikTok spokesperson stated that the company's priority is 'fostering a safe and positive space where people can be creative, discover what they love, and connect with their community,' and that the measures 'build on our commitment and core objective to continually enhance our robust safety tools to protect teens.'

More than a dozen other states, including California and New York, still have suits against TikTok. The company has previously settled cases against it that were headed for trial, including a Los Angeles lawsuit brought by a young woman and a suit from a Kentucky school district. Meta, by contrast, has taken its chances in court, with bruising results. In March, a jury in New Mexico ordered the Facebook and Instagram owner to pay $375m after finding it had misled the public about the safety of its platforms for children. That same month, a Los Angeles jury found Meta and Google’s YouTube negligent in the case of a 20-year-old woman who said she became hooked on social media as a child, awarding her $6m.

Alabama originally sued TikTok and its Chinese parent company ByteDance in April 2025, alleging the app was engineered to hook young users 'just like a sophisticated gambling 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 such as 'Restricted Mode' and 'Kids Mode.' The lawsuit accused TikTok of falsely claiming it limits access to sexual and violent content for young users to have its app rated safe for teens in app stores run by Google, Apple and Microsoft and of misleading users about the Chinese government’s access to US users’ data. TikTok said it designed its platform with teen safety as a key priority and argued that section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act shields online platforms from liability for user-generated content.

What remains unknown is whether the settlement will be replicated by other states and how TikTok will enforce the new restrictions. The company has not provided details on how it will monitor compliance or how the $100m will be allocated.