On 10 September 2026, a judge in Travis County, Texas, signed an order finding that TikTok broke that state's consumer protection law by misleading people about how well it protected minors from inappropriate content.
One of the two findings is about a setting a lot of parents have quietly trusted: Restricted Mode. The court found the State had established that it did not work the way it was marketed.
That is a US court applying a US law. It changes nothing about Australian law. But it answers a question every parent here has asked at some point, in front of some app, at about nine o'clock at night: if I flick this switch, is my kid actually covered?
The case is State of Texas v. TikTok Inc. and others, Cause No. D-1-GN-25-003118, in the 250th Judicial District Court of Travis County. Judge Cory Liu signed the order on 10 September 2026, granting the State's motion for partial summary judgment.
The order describes two ways the State said TikTok broke the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act. The Court agreed the State had met its burden on both.
The first concerns what TikTok said it would take down. The order records that it "claimed that it would remove certain categories of video content that violated its Community Guidelines, such as those promoting drug use or gambling, depicting minors behaving in a sexually suggestive manner, or showing graphic images of wounds and injuries." The State's case was that TikTok's internal moderation policies instead told staff such content "should be allowed to remain on the platform with the designation of 'hard to find' rather than 'do not allow.'" Hard to find is not the same as gone.
The second is Restricted Mode. The order quotes what TikTok told users the feature did: that it "limits the appearance of content that may not be appropriate for all audiences" and that users "shouldn't see mature or complex themes" — among them profanity, sexually suggestive content, realistic violence, weapons, and illegal or controlled substances. The State argued that "for years… TikTok employees internally recognized that Restricted Mode was not functioning in the way it was marketed and exposed users to a high volume of content that should have been filtered out." The Court agreed this had been established.
Two things to be precise about. This is a civil finding of liability, not a criminal one, and not a fine. And it is not the end of the case: the Texas Attorney-General's office says it "will now proceed to trial against TikTok, where relief and penalties will be determined," with that trial "expected to be set for next month."
TikTok is one of the services included in Australia's under-16 rules. From 10 December 2025, the law requires age-restricted platforms to stop under-16s holding accounts. That is what the law does — it is about accounts on those platforms, and the lists eSafety has published are of services assessed or self-assessed, not a list of every online service.
So for a lot of Australian homes, TikTok's own toggle is not the live question any more. The live one sits underneath it, and applies to every app still on your child's device: what is that safety setting actually promising, and who checked?
Australia's own regulator is blunt about this. eSafety's advice to parents says parental controls "can be a useful part of your online safety approach," but that it is best they are "used as part of a range of methods," because "Both abusers and children themselves can find ways around parental controls, so consider what else you can do."
A safety toggle is a promise a company makes about its own product — usually in good faith. It is still a promise, and a promise is not a fence.
If content or contact crosses the line, report it to eSafety at esafety.gov.au.
A stranger reached one of our sons through a video game he loved and tried to coax him onto a train to "come stay." A disturbing clip buried inside a children's cartoon left another of our boys too frightened to sleep with the lights off — years on, he still is. Neither was "social media," and both slipped through in an ordinary moment of looking away — because no parent can watch every second, and we don't think we're alone in that.
Our guide Is TikTok safe for kids? walks through the settings and what each one covers. And the honest version of where a tool like ours fits: "Social media bans help. They don't stop grooming in games. They don't stop harmful content disguised as children's videos. They don't stop strangers in private chats. Aunty Bea can't be everywhere your child is. But she blocks what you choose, flags what she can see, and makes sure you're never the last to know."
Read next: our guide →
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