TikTok has agreed to strengthen age assurance and add restrictions for young users under a settlement with Alabama that will bring the state at least $100 million. The agreement resolves a child-safety lawsuit that had been scheduled for trial this week.
The settlement requires TikTok to introduce more robust checks to establish the ages of young users. Those checks underpin several of its other obligations, including a two-hour daily time limit, parental controls that can further reduce time on the app, and a prohibition on cosmetic filters for teenagers.
Teen users will also encounter prompts to pause after 15 minutes of continuous use, with further interruptions at 60 and 90 minutes. Access is to be restricted between midnight and 6 a.m., while messaging and push notifications will face additional overnight and school-hour limits. TikTok must make teen accounts less discoverable to adults and notify parents of suspicious interactions involving adult users.
The agreement calls for a non-personalized feed by default for teen users, alongside stronger content moderation and more accessible parental controls. Alabama’s attorney general described these measures as a response to the state’s claims that TikTok designed features that encouraged excessive use, exposed young people to harm and misled the public about the platform’s safety. The settlement resolves those claims rather than establishing them through a trial verdict.
The age-assurance obligation reflects the practical difficulty of applying different safety settings to adults and minors without reliably identifying a user’s age. In a separate case, Meta agreed to age-assurance and under-13 removal requirements as part of a multistate settlement. Discord has begun rolling out age-based account classifications that can draw on account signals or active verification, depending on the user. The Alabama Meta agreement will bring the state $117 million, according to the attorney general.
Alabama is due to receive the initial $100 million within 45 days. The state’s attorney general said payments could reach $300 million if specified conditions are met. The office called the agreement a first-in-the-nation settlement; Alabama had been poised to become the first state to take its claims against TikTok to trial.
Sources: Alabama Attorney General
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By the ID Tech Editorial Team
