Reagen Maher, who held senior safety and investigations roles at TikTok from 2021 to 2024, testified that she spent months pressing leaders to address sexual content involving minors. In a workplace chat cited in her deposition, Maher wrote that she had been trying to get the issue fixed by people who did not consider the harms serious enough. She said the concerns reached then-chief operating officer V. Pappas.

An internal investigation cited in the testimony found that children ages 13 to 15 appeared in 112,000 TikTok Live videos in January 2022. The investigation identified risks of grooming and child sexual abuse material and said TikTok received significant revenue from gifts sent to livestreams that violated its rules. On TikTok Live, viewers can send digital gifts that may be converted into money.

The potential legal consequences depend on the facts and what the company knew, experts said. Federal law requires platforms to report apparent child sexual abuse material, child sex trafficking and online enticement to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children when they have actual knowledge of covered offenses. TikTok did not answer questions about whether it reported all videos flagged in the testimony, how it handled revenue tied to illegal material, or whether it filed related suspicious-activity reports with federal authorities.

TikTok says it has an anti-money-laundering program aligned with international standards and industry practices. After the investigation was published, spokesperson Nathaniel Brown said the claims were selectively presented by trial lawyers and gave a misleading account of the company’s history and youth-safety work. The company also pointed to safety policies it has published.

Other testimony described ways minors could evade protections. Maher said users signing up through Google, Facebook or Instagram could access an 18-and-over version of TikTok, and that senior leaders knew of the loophole. The company did not address questions about that specific issue. TikTok says it asks users for their birth date and uses account information to identify possible age misstatements, which can lead to human review.

A separate internal chat from 2021 described a hidden link that allowed teens to disconnect their accounts from Family Pairing, which lets parents manage settings such as screen time and content filters. A TikTok product manager wrote that the option made the feature seem pointless. TikTok says it notifies parents when a minor unlinks an account.

The depositions also raised concerns about the platform’s recommendation system. Eric Han, TikTok’s head of safety from 2019 to 2023, testified that he learned in 2020 about “rabbit holes” in which users repeatedly receive similar content. He acknowledged that such recommendations could lead young users toward material about suicide or body image. A company report cited in his testimony warned of a contagion effect around suicide-related discussion. Han said TikTok did not warn parents about the potential dangers.

The records also describe TikTok’s reluctance to survey users’ ages. In testimony about a 2018 discussion among executives, former TikTok Live head Adam Wang said a proposed survey avoided questions that could reveal users were in elementary school, partly because the results might draw Federal Trade Commission scrutiny. The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act generally restricts the collection of personal information from children under 13 without verified parental consent.

The testimony emerges from multidistrict litigation begun in 2022, in which TikTok, Meta, Google and Snap face claims that their platforms were designed in ways harmful to young users and that companies failed to disclose risks. TikTok has settled some cases, including a $100 million agreement with Alabama in September over allegations related to addiction and harmful content. The company’s liability in the broader cases remains unresolved. In a separate trial earlier in 2026, a jury found Meta and YouTube liable for designing platforms that were addictive to young users.

The stakes extend to millions of families: Pew Research Center reported that 68% of U.S. teens ages 13 to 17 used TikTok in 2025. The company introduced age-based settings in 2021 and Family Pairing in 2020, but the court testimony raises questions about whether those protections worked as intended and how quickly leadership acted on risks identified by its own staff.