TikTok will pay the US state of Alabama at least USD 100 million, or about KES 13 billion, and change how the app works for teenagers there. The money settles a lawsuit from the state’s attorney general who accused TikTok of building an addictive app and misleading the public about its safety. Alabama announced the deal on 25th September 2026, days before a trial was due to start on Monday, 28th September. TikTok paid to end the case and did not admit wrongdoing.
Attorney General Steve Marshall sued TikTok and its Chinese parent company ByteDance in April 2025. The state argued that the app’s endless feed of recommended videos hooks children, and that its age checks are easy to dodge because people can watch videos without creating an account. The state said that makes safety tools like Kids Mode, TikTok’s restricted mode for children, pointless.
It is TikTok’s first settlement with a US state. At least 27 other states and Washington DC are suing it over similar claims, and TikTok has settled every case that had been picked for trial. Alabama would have been the first state to argue its case to a jury.
What changes for teens in Alabama
The court filing is a consent decree, a settlement a judge signs so it can be enforced. Its rules cover users aged 13 to 17, plus accounts that say the user is an adult but that TikTok predicts belong to someone under 18. The main changes:
- From midnight to 6am local time, teens can’t watch videos by default. Messaging, search and settings still work. Push notifications are off from 10pm to 7am and during school hours.
- The default daily limit is two hours, resetting at midnight. Genuine videos of 10 minutes or longer, messaging, search and settings don’t count towards it. A parent whose account is linked to the teen’s through TikTok’s parental controls can change the limit, and the teen can ask that parent for more time.
- TikTok has four months to add a “productive pause”, a prompt to take a break, at 60 and 90 minutes of daily use. After each pause, the app must show a notice for every 15 minutes of continuous scrolling.
- Teens can’t use filters that idealise a face in ways only cosmetic surgery could. Cartoon, animal, makeup and parody effects stay.
- Within nine months, teens get an option to switch to a non-personalised feed, one that isn’t tuned to what they’ve watched. New teen accounts must be prompted within 10 days. The state’s announcement lists this as a default. The decree makes it a choice.
- TikTok must estimate users’ ages, treating 13 to 15 and 16 to 17 as separate groups. Within a year it can wrongly label no more than 7% of 13 to 15-year-olds and 14% of 16 to 17-year-olds as adults. Within two years those caps drop to 5% and 10%.
- Teen accounts must stay private by default and adults must stay harder to find. Teens get a caution notice when a chat starts with a suspicious account. Linked parents get a notice about contact with accounts flagged for sexual exploitation of children or blackmail using intimate images.
TikTok must pay these amounts
The state’s announcement says “a minimum of USD 100 million” and “up to USD 300 million”. The decree shows how those fit together.
| Payment | USD | About KES | Due |
|---|---|---|---|
| Restitution and remediation | 100 million | 13.0 billion | Within 45 days |
| The state’s legal fees | 14.2 million | 1.8 billion | Within 30 days |
| The state’s litigation costs | 2 million | 260 million | Within 30 days |
| Guaranteed total | 116.2 million | 15.1 billion | |
| Depends on other states | 183.8 million | 23.8 billion | In four stages |
| Total if every stage is paid | 300 million | 38.9 billion |
Restitution and remediation means money to compensate people and repair the harm. The decree is dated 25th September, so the fees fall due by 25th October and the USD 100 million by 9th November. The attorney general can spend it “for any lawful purpose”, including restitution and remediation for Alabama consumers. The decree doesn’t name specific youth programmes.
The USD 183.8 million is not guaranteed. It is released as state attorneys general sign qualifying agreements: 10 states release USD 55.14 million or about KES 7.1 billion, 20 release the same again, 30 release USD 36.76 million or about KES 4.8 billion, and 40 release the same again. The first target has to be hit within 24 months of the decree and each later one within 24 months of the stage before. Miss one, and it and every later stage lapse. Each stage is paid in ten equal yearly instalments. If other states win more than USD 5.1 billion from TikTok in total, a top-off adds 1.55% of the excess.
Where the terms come from
The rules follow the settlement Meta, which owns Instagram and Facebook, reached with 47 states on 26th August 2026. It is worth roughly USD 17 billion or about KES 2.2 trillion, and about USD 5.3 billion or KES 687 billion of it depends on YouTube and TikTok adopting comparable rules. Alabama’s share of the Meta deal is USD 117 million or about KES 15.2 billion.
What it means in Kenya
The decree says its rules apply to TikTok “in the State of Alabama”, and TikTok has announced no rollout beyond it. Meta went the other way, and we covered it taking its teen content limits worldwide in June.
TikTok’s guide for parents lists private accounts for 13 to 17-year-olds, a 60-minute daily screen time default, and notifications off from 9pm for 13 to 15-year-olds and 10pm for 16 to 17-year-olds. It doesn’t say which countries get them, and adds that the rules “may differ depending on your age and local laws”. The 60-minute default is tighter than Alabama’s two hours. The difference is enforcement. In Alabama a judge can hold TikTok to its limits. In Kenya they’re TikTok’s own settings.
Kenya’s two child-safety documents set no screen-time or overnight limits. The Data Protection Commissioner’s 2025 guidance notes say parental consent should be mandatory to open a social media account. The Communications Authority’s April 2025 guidelines ask the industry for age verification and stronger default privacy. In the last quarter of 2025, TikTok banned 108,752 accounts in Kenya, and 93,704 of them were suspected to belong to children under 13, as we reported in May.
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