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 US$375 million ($662.5m) 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 US$6m ($8.8m).
In August, Meta agreed to pay $18 billion ($31.8b) to settle a sweeping lawsuit brought by US states accusing it of designing Instagram and Facebook to addict children.
Going to trial could have exposed TikTok to unprecedented public scrutiny of how it handles safety internally, with company documents and executive testimony potentially aired in open court.
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”.
In its complaint, the state said investigators set up TikTok accounts posing as users aged 13, 14 and 15 in Alabama and switched on Restricted Mode.
Despite TikTok’s assurances that users in that mode should not see mature themes, the accounts were quickly served videos about suicide, self-harm, eating disorders, alcohol and sex, according to the filing.
The state also accused TikTok of falsely telling app stores the platform was suitable for children aged 12 and up, and contained only mild or infrequent mature content.
TikTok, whose US operations were transferred this year to a venture led by American investors, has argued that the case should be paused and that it is shielded by Section 230, a federal law that protects online platforms from liability for content posted by users.
The company has said it “designed its platform with teen safety as a key priority”.
– AFP
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