TikTok and ByteDance have agreed to a $400 million settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice over allegations that the platform allowed millions of children under 13 to use the service while collecting their personal data without required parental consent.
TikTok and its parent company ByteDance have agreed to pay $400 million to settle a federal lawsuit alleging widespread violations of children's online privacy law, resolving a case that exposed years of failures to remove underage users from the platform.
The settlement, first reported by TechCrunch, resolves a 2024 suit brought by the U.S. Department of Justice under the Biden administration. Regulators alleged that TikTok permitted millions of children under 13 to use the platform while collecting their personal data without the parental consent required under the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, known as COPPA.
The agreement does not require TikTok or ByteDance to admit wrongdoing.
In addition to the financial penalty, the settlement mandates a range of protective measures, including stronger age-verification controls, additional safeguards for younger users, and expanded tools giving parents greater oversight of their children's account activity and personal data.
The case is not TikTok's first brush with COPPA enforcement. In 2019, the company's predecessor app, Musical.ly, paid $5.7 million to settle comparable allegations. As part of that earlier agreement, TikTok committed to preventing children under 13 from opening accounts. The DOJ's 2024 complaint alleged that the company nonetheless continued to struggle to identify and remove underage users in the years that followed.
Regulators further alleged that TikTok retained and used data belonging to children — including information that could support targeted advertising — even after internal employees flagged concerns about the presence of young users on the platform. The complaint also alleged that the company modified its registration process in ways that made it harder to determine whether prospective users met the minimum age requirement.
The settlement arrives amid broader scrutiny of TikTok's approach to user safety. Days before the agreement was announced, Bloomberg reported that TikTok had intentionally disabled an algorithmic safeguard for roughly 10 percent of U.S. users as part of an internal experiment. The safeguard was designed to limit user exposure to harmful or potentially damaging content.
That disclosure drew bipartisan concern from lawmakers. Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee and Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut sent a joint letter to TikTok CEO Shou Chew and Adam Presser, the chief executive of the company's U.S. operations, questioning the decision to disable the protection.
The $400 million penalty dwarfs the $5.7 million figure from seven years ago, reflecting both the scale of the alleged violations and the elevated regulatory appetite for accountability in children's digital safety — a legislative and enforcement priority that has intensified across both parties in Congress over the past several years.
Whether the structural changes required under the settlement will prove adequate to satisfy regulators and lawmakers watching TikTok's compliance record remains to be seen, particularly as the platform continues to face questions on multiple fronts simultaneously.
TechEchelon Staff bylines are produced collectively by the newsroom for short, breaking, and wire-style coverage. Longer-form reporting is published under the responsible reporter's name.
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