Alabama’s $100 Million TikTok Settlement Will Turn Off the ‘For You’ Feed for Minors

TikTok must turn off its personalized “For You” feed for users under 18 in Alabama under a first-of-its-kind $100 million settlement reached days before a scheduled civil trial. The consent decree gives the platform 45 days to make the changes and imposes an automatic $300 million penalty if it fails to comply with any of its structural requirements.

For minors in the state, a non-personalized or chronological interface will replace the “For You” page. TikTok’s proprietary recommendation algorithm uses engagement metrics to assemble endless streams of videos, creating the engagement loops that critics blame for compounding the youth mental health crisis.

Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall sued TikTok in April 2025, alleging that the company deliberately built addictive features to maximize screen time. The state’s complaint said the recommendation algorithm steered minors toward self-harm, eating disorders, drug abuse and sexually explicit material. It also alleged that parental controls, including “Restricted Mode,” were easy to bypass and had been intentionally presented to parents as comprehensive safety measures.

The settlement also sets a hard two-hour daily limit and mandatory overnight curfews for teenage users in Alabama. Compulsory “productive pauses” must stop the video feed after 15 minutes of uninterrupted use, with further forced pauses at the 60-minute and 90-minute marks. TikTok must ban cosmetic filters on minor accounts, strengthen age verification and tighten communication barriers between teenagers and adult accounts.

“TikTok has agreed to give parents real control over what their kids see and how much time they spend on the app,” Marshall said in an official statement.

The Alabama agreement reflects a shift among state prosecutors toward using consumer protection laws to compel changes to product design rather than accepting purely financial payouts. Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier has supported his state’s aggressive legal actions against TikTok, backed by Florida laws restricting minors’ access to social media. Utah, California and Ohio have enacted age-appropriate design codes and parental consent mandates aimed at curbing major tech platforms’ influence.

Those state actions are unfolding as TikTok’s federal position changes. The platform recently avoided a total U.S. ban after its Chinese parent, ByteDance Ltd., divested control of its domestic operations to meet national security demands. Once the restructuring was complete, the U.S. Department of Justice said federal employees could again download TikTok on government-issued devices, reversing earlier administrative bans.

Federal scrutiny has continued despite the resolution of the ownership dispute. In August, TikTok agreed to a separate $400 million settlement with the Justice Department over allegations that it systematically violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) by collecting personal data from children under 13 without parental consent and failing to delete accounts when requested. Florida has also recently sued Netflix, alleging that the streaming company tracked children’s data in violation of explicit privacy pledges.