Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall’s office announced a settlement with TikTok on Friday that will pay the state a minimum of $100 million within 45 days.
The trial would have made Alabama the first state in the country to take the platform to court was set to have opened today in Montgomery.
The deal resolves Alabama’s April 2025 lawsuit against TikTok Inc. and its parent company, ByteDance Inc., and could grow to $300 million if certain conditions tied to industry-wide adoption of the same restrictions are met.
“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. TikTok has agreed to give parents real control over what their kids see and how much time they spend on the app,” Attorney General Marshall said.
“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.”
TikTok must build in a two-hour daily time limit, with parental controls to cut that further, plus “productive pauses” that interrupt teen users after 15 minutes of continuous scrolling and again at 60 and 90 minutes.
The app goes dark for children from midnight to 6 a.m., with messaging and push notifications also restricted overnight and during school hours.
TikTok must also strengthen age verification, ban cosmetic filters for teen users, default teen accounts to a non-personalized feed, and limit how easily adults can find and message minors, with parents notified of suspicious contact.
Marshall’s office sued TikTok and ByteDance in Montgomery County Circuit Court in April 2025, alleging the platform was engineered to addict Alabama children and that the company misrepresented the safety of tools like “Restricted Mode” and “Kids Mode.”
TikTok has now settled every case picked for trial against it nationwide, including claims from five young people and a Kentucky school district.
Chief Counsel Katherine Robertson, who oversees the case for the Attorney General’s Office, said the money will likely land in the state’s general fund, though her office wants lawmakers to steer it toward Alabama youth.
“It will probably go to the general fund, but we hope to have discussions with our legislative leadership about using this to really remediate the harm that’s been done to our youth here in Alabama,” Robertson said.
TikTok is the third technology company Marshall has brought to heel this year. He announced a $12.2 million settlement with Roblox in April, steering every dollar toward school resource officers statewide.
In August, he announced Alabama would collect $117,345,409 from Meta, with a contingent installment worth roughly $50.6 million more riding on whether Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube adopt matching restrictions.
The TikTok deal mirrors those terms almost line for line, down to the midnight-to-6 a.m. blackout and the 15-, 60- and 90-minute pause structure.
Josh Hayes of Prince Glover Hayes and Rhon Jones of Beasley Allen, Crow, Methvin, Portis & Miles represented the state alongside Robertson and the Attorney General’s Consumer Protection Division.
Grayson Everett is the editor in chief of Yellowhammer News. You can follow him on X @Grayson270.
