TikTok has reached a $400m (£293.2m) settlement with the US Department of Justice (DoJ), ending a 2024 lawsuit alleging the company violated federal children's privacy laws.
The social media firm will pay $300m immediately and a further $100m after an order vacates an earlier consent decree against its predecessor company, Musical.ly, the DoJ said on Friday.
As part of the consent agreement, the Federal Trade Commission said TikTok, then known as Musical.ly, was aware that young children used the app and had failed to get parental consent to collect their names, email addresses and other personal information. It paid a $5.7m (£4.18m) fine.
The settlement comes as social media companies face a wave of lawsuits over children's safety and privacy, and a growing number of countries are banning young kids and teens from social media apps.
The DoJ sued TikTok and ByteDance in 2024 for allegedly failing to protect children's privacy, and illegally collecting their information.
The defendants were accused of violating a law requiring online services aimed at children to obtain parental consent to collect personal information from users under 13.
Associate attorney general Stanley E Woodward Jr said the Justice Department's priority "is ensuring that children are protected online and that companies entrusted with their personal information meet their legal obligations".
"This settlement is a major victory for American children and parents," he said in a statement.
TikTok did not immediately comment.
ByteDance in January agreed to establish a majority American-owned joint venture to secure US data and avoid a US ban.
The government noted that since the complaint was filed, TikTok has undergone significant changes to its ownership, management, compliance functions, and privacy practices.
The DoJ said the settlement "ensures that American families continue to benefit from stronger protections without the delay and uncertainty of protracted litigation".
The TikTok US joint venture said in a court filing that all users must enter their date of birth to use the site. TikTok said it has developed sophisticated age-moderation systems that identify children under 13 pretending to be older.
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That court filing said TikTok has hundreds of personnel trained in underage moderation and deletes tens of thousands of underage accounts.
Separately, TikTok is also among other companies facing scrutiny after comments from Ireland's justice minister that social media companies have a big responsibility in not allowing posts that "glorify criminal behaviour" after five teenagers died when the car they were in was driven the wrong way up the M9.
TikTok said it has removed all of the flagged content and banned accounts that violate its policies against criminal behaviour.
It comes as Instagram's parent company, Meta Platforms, is on trial in a federal court in Oakland, California, over allegations it violated the 1998 Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), along with various state statutes.
Google's YouTube in 2019 paid $170m (124.6m), and Epic Games in 2022 paid $275m (£201.6m) for COPPA violations.
(c) Sky News 2026: TikTok reaches $400m US children's privacy settlement
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