On August 21, 2026, TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance, agreed to pay $400 million to resolve a federal lawsuit involving alleged violations of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). They’ll pay $300 million immediately, with another $100 million due after a court order involving its predecessor, Musical.ly.
The settlement was for a case filed by the Department of Justice (DOJ) in 2024. They claimed TikTok allowed children under 13 to use the platform and collected personal information without the parental consent required under COPPA. They also said the companies failed to promptly delete children’s accounts and information when parents requested it.
While the massive TikTok settlement may protect children’s privacy, it raises questions about how age is determined and what’s done when an underaged user is removed.
As parents deal with the widespread health effects social media has on children and teens, the settlement is about much more than money; age verification and age assurance is important, but so is the privacy of underage users.
What was the DOJ Lawsuit Against TikTok About?
The DOJ’s lawsuit alleged that ByteDance knew children under 13 were using TikTok despite its age requirement of 13 or over. They claimed that there were millions of “age unknown” accounts created through third-party credentials, allowing users to bypass the platform’s normal age protections.
The DOJ said that TikTok employees tasked with determining whether an account belonged to a child sometimes spent only five to seven seconds reviewing flagged profiles.
According to court filings, TikTok requires users to enter their date of birth before they can use the platform. But a birthday entered into a signup form doesn’t prove that the person is actually that age.
This has been a major problem for all tech companies, but the harm to younger users doesn’t end with privacy concerns. In addition to TikTok, Meta (Facebook, Instagram), Google (YouTube), and Snap (Snapchat) have been facing thousands of social media lawsuits about youth mental health harm.
How Does TikTok Know How Old Your Child Is?
Since the DOJ lawsuit against TikTok was filed, the company says it has significantly strengthened its age-moderation system.
Now, the company uses technology designed to identify children under 13 who provide a false age. They have hundreds of employees trained to find potentially underage users and says the system has removed tens of thousands of accounts.
What this all means is that TikTok is no longer relying solely on what a user says their age is.
What Information Is Used to Determine a Child’s Age on TikTok?
The way that TikTok figures out if a child is underage is where the issue becomes more complicated for parents.
TikTok’s age-assurance systems can use information beyond a person’s stated birthday. They’ve described systems that can analyze profile details, posted videos, and other behavior on the platform to identify accounts that may belong to someone under 13. Once accounts were flagged by the technology, they were reviewed by human employees.
In other words, the platform may be looking at how someone uses TikTok, not just the age they enter into the signup form. This creates a difficult privacy trade-off.
Many parents want social media companies to do better at keeping young children off their platforms, which are intended for teenagers and adults. But the more sophisticated age detection becomes, the more information they may collect to analyze.
It makes the question of what information TikTok collects for age determination nearly as important as whether it successfully finds and removes underage users.
TikTok Users Over 13 Face Other Problems
COPPA generally focuses on children under 13, but it’s important to recognize that once they become that age, children aren’t suddenly immune to the risks associated with social media.
Teenagers still face privacy concerns, harmful content, excessive or compulsive use, exploitation, and other online risks.
That distinction – social media’s effects on youth regardless of meeting age requirements – has led to thousands of lawsuits. As courts and regulators examine whether tech companies have a responsibility to protect young users beyond simply complying with child privacy laws, protecting kids online has become a nationwide issue.
The recent $567 million ruling against Meta shows how much broader the legal debate has become. The New Mexico case wasn’t about financial penalties. The ruling ordered Meta to fund treatment, prevent harm, and make changes to Facebook and Instagram’s platforms to better protect younger users.
For parents, the message has become quite clear: Shielding children from online harm isn’t just about how old they are. It’s about what happens after the platform verifies their age, what data they collect and ensuring it’s deleted, and that the negative impact of using social media platforms is limited.
What Parents Should Ask Before Letting Their Child Use Social Media
TikTok’s $400 million settlement with the DOJ is a reminder that parents can’t assume an app’s age requirement means tech companies can reliably keep underage users off their platforms.
Before allowing a child or teenager to use social media, parents should consider the following:
- How does the platform verify age and what happens if a child lies? Does it simply rely on entering a birthday? A social media platform’s stated minimum age is only useful if it has a meaningful way to enforce it if a child lies about their age. Parents can report an underage account on TikTok if they discover their child created one.
- What information does TikTok and other platforms collect? When apps determine age, parents should know if they collected profile information, behavior, facial age estimation, identification or other data, and how to get it deleted.
- Can parents request their child’s account and information to be deleted? The 2024 complaint filed by the DOJ alleged that parents faced unnecessary hurdles when trying to have their children’s accounts and data deleted. State laws, like California’s Delete Act, are beginning to address data deletion rights for people of all ages.
- What protections apply after a child turns 13? COPPA has limitations once children turn a certain age, so don’t assume your teens are safe. Every social media platform has their own ways to protect younger users, and more changes may be coming following the New Mexico ruling.
- What does the platform do to make itself safer for young users? The DOJ lawsuit against TikTok alleged that even its Kids Mode collected and used children’s personal information. What parents are told about safety features isn’t enough. Check for parental controls and privacy settings, and know what’s in user agreements for TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube.
Privacy cases involving social media companies are showing that there are risks and other concerns beyond keeping underage children off their platforms. After all, if social media companies are going to be responsible for protecting children, they first have to know which users are children. The information they collect to do so may be part of a larger problem.
The technology TikTok and others use to figure out someone’s age could end up becoming one of the next major privacy battles that parents and social media users face.
