From Australia to the EU, governments are setting minimum ages for social media. Alabama’s $100 million TikTok settlement shows the American alternative: regulating how the products work, one lawsuit at a time.
For most of the last decade, the government’s answer to children and social media was a warning label: parental controls, screen-time dashboards and reminders to take a break. That era is ending. Across the world, governments are moving from asking platforms to protect children to deciding who gets on the platforms and how they behave. Last week showed both approaches at work.
The ban model spreads
On September 17, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen proposed banning children under 13 from social media and requiring online services to design safe accounts for minors. Companies that don’t comply could face fines of up to 6% of global annual sales, according to a Reuters roundup of restrictions worldwide. The proposal would also set rules for video games, AI companions and chatbots used by anyone under 18.
The EU is joining a growing list. Australia became the first country to block under-16s from major platforms in December 2025, with penalties of up to A$49.5 million. Greece banned social media for children under 15 in April, with fines starting in January 2027. Turkey passed an under-15 ban the same month. Malaysia has started blocking under-16s from registering accounts, the UAE set a minimum age of 15, and Indonesia is phasing in restrictions for under-16s on platforms the government deems high risk. Britain, Denmark, New Zealand, Norway, Poland and Slovenia have proposals underway. New Zealand’s would allow fines of up to 10% of a platform’s global revenue.
Not every attempt has held up. In August, France’s top court blocked a parliamentary ban on social media for under-15s, ruling that it violated freedom of expression. It was a sign that age bans can run into legal limits even where political support is strong.
The American model: change the product
The U.S. is heading in a different direction, and constitutional constraints are a big reason why. Broad age bans in America face First Amendment challenges, so the leading efforts target the design of the apps rather than whether children can use them.
Alabama’s settlement with TikTok is the clearest example yet. Days before the state’s case was set to become the first U.S. trial against the company, TikTok agreed to pay Alabama at least $100 million, which could rise to $300 million if other states reach similar agreements within a set period. Attorney General Steve Marshall called it “a great day for Alabama parents.”
The money is not the most significant part. According to the attorney general’s office, TikTok must build these features for teen users in Alabama:
a default two-hour daily time limit, which parents can make stricter; interruptions after 15 minutes of continuous scrolling and again at 60 and 90 minutes; blocked access from midnight to 6 a.m., with messaging and notifications restricted overnight and during school hours; stronger age verification; limits on how easily adults can find teen accounts; parental alerts about suspicious adult contact; a ban on cosmetic filters for teens; and a default feed that isn’t personalized. It’s still unclear when the changes will take effect.
Taken together, those requirements go beyond payment or disclosure. They change how the product works, including the feed, the session length and the endless scrolling at the center of the state’s case. Alabama argued TikTok’s algorithm pulled young users toward increasingly intense content, including material about violence and self-harm. TikTok has said it prioritizes teen safety and argued that federal law shields platforms from liability for user-generated content.
The deal follows a template. It is modeled on Meta‘s recent multistate agreement, which included a $117.1 millionsettlement with Alabama. California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law on September 11 restricting under-16s’ exposure to addictive social media features. The Kids Online Safety Act, which would require platforms to use reasonable care in designing features that could harm minors, gained momentum in Congress after Sen. Ted Cruz backed it in May. TikTok has now settled every case selected for trial against it, but it still faces thousands of lawsuits from individuals, school districts and municipalities.
Two approaches, one weak point
The two models reflect different theories of the problem. A ban assumes the danger is access, so the solution is keeping children off the platforms until they’re older. A design mandate assumes the danger is the product itself, including infinite feeds, overnight notifications and personalized recommendation engines, so the solution is changing how those features work for young users. The EU proposal tries to do both.
Both approaches depend on the same unsolved technology: age verification. A ban only works if platforms can tell who is under the limit, and Alabama’s time limits only apply to users the platform identifies as teenagers. The lawsuit argued TikTok’s self-reported age checks were easy to get around, including by watching videos without creating an account. Stronger verification brings its own tradeoffs. New Zealand’s proposal mentions facial technology and digital identity documents, which means collecting more sensitive data from everyone, not just minors.
That tension will shape the next phase of the fight. The rules are getting tougher, but enforcing them requires platforms to know more about who their users are.
Where power is shifting
For years, platforms decided on their own what protections teenagers got. Governments and courts now decide much more of that, whether by setting minimum ages abroad or dictating product features through settlements in the U.S. The American version has a clear limit: it’s being built state by state, and each case or law covers only the users in that state. A teenager in Alabama may soon get a TikTok that pauses after 15 minutes, while a teenager in a neighboring state gets the same endless feed. Whether that patchwork turns into a national standard depends on how many attorneys general follow Alabama, and on whether Congress acts before the courts write the rules themselves.
Sources: Reuters via Investing.com, Alabama Attorney General’s Office, CNBC, TechCrunch, TechXplore, WBRC, American Bazaar