More than a dozen states and the District of Columbia filed lawsuits against TikTok on Tuesday, claiming the popular short-video app is harming juvenile people’s mental health by designing its platform to be addictive among children.
The lawsuits stem from a nationwide investigation into TikTok launched in March 2022 by a bipartisan coalition of attorneys general from many states, including New York, California, Kentucky and New Jersey. All complaints were filed in state courts.
At the heart of each lawsuit is TikTok’s algorithm, which controls what users see on the platform by filling the app’s main “For You” feed with content tailored to people’s interests. The lawsuits also highlight design features that they say make children addicted to the platform, such as the ability to endlessly scroll through content, push notifications with built-in “buzzes” and face filters that give users an unattainable look.
In its filings, the District of Columbia described the algorithm as “dopamine-inducing” and said it was intentionally designed to be addictive so that the company could lure many juvenile users into overconsumption and keep them glued to the app for hours. TikTok does this despite knowing that these behaviors lead to “profound psychological and physiological harm” such as anxiety, depression, body dysmorphia and other long-lasting problems, the complaint says.
“It capitalizes on the fact that it gets young people addicted to its platform,” Brian Schwalb, attorney general for the District of Columbia, said in an interview.
“The ugly truth is that TikTok falsely portrays its platform as safe for young users, when in reality it is designed to turn a generation of children into social media addicts for the benefit of TikTok,” said Cari Fais, Acting Director of the Division of New Jersey Consumer Affairs, in a statement.
TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The social media company doesn’t allow children under 13 to sign up for its main service and restricts some content to anyone under 18. But Washington and several other states said in their filing that children could easily bypass those restrictions, allowing them to access the service and allow adults to operate it, even though the company claims its platform is protected for children.
Your lawsuit is also directed against other areas of the company.
The district alleges that TikTok operates as an “unlicensed virtual economy” by allowing people to purchase TikTok Coins – a virtual currency within the platform – and send “gifts” to streamers on TikTok LIVE in exchange for real money can be paid out. TikTok takes a The complaint says the company receives a 50% commission on these financial transactions, but has not registered as a money transmitter with the U.S. Treasury Department or authorities in the District.
Officials say teens are often exploited for sexually explicit content through TikTok’s LIVE streaming feature, which has allowed the app to essentially function as a “virtual strip club” with no age restrictions. They say that the share that the company receives from the financial transactions allows it to profit from the exploitation.
“TikTok claims it is safe for young people, but that is far from true. In New York and across the country, young people have died or been injured while taking dangerous TikTok challenges, and many more are feeling even more sad, anxious and depressed because of TikTok’s addictive features,” New York Attorney General Letitia James wrote in a statement .
James and 13 other attorneys general say the goal of their lawsuits is to stop TikTok from using these features, impose fines for their allegedly illegal practices and seek damages for harmed users.
Many states have filed lawsuits against TikTok and other technology companies in recent years as confrontation grows over prominent social media platforms and their ever-increasing influence on juvenile people’s lives. In some cases, the challenges have been coordinated in ways similar to the way states previously organized against the tobacco and pharmaceutical industries.
Last week, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued TikTok, saying the company shared and sold minors’ personal information, violating a up-to-date state law banning the practices. TikTok, which denies the allegations, is also fighting a similar data-focused federal lawsuit filed by the Justice Department in August.
Several Republican-led states including Nebraska, Kansas, New Hampshire, Kansas, Iowa and Arkansas have also previously sued the company, sometimes unsuccessfully, over allegations that it harms children’s mental health by exposing them to “inappropriate” content allowed to protect children from being sexually exploited on their platform. Arkansas has filed a lawsuit against YouTube as well as Meta Platforms, which owns Facebook and Instagram and is being sued by dozens of states for allegedly harming the mental health of juvenile people. New York City and some public school districts have also filed their own lawsuits.
TikTok in particular faces further challenges at the national level. Under a federal law that took effect earlier this year, TikTok could be banned from the U.S. by mid-January if China-based parent company ByteDance doesn’t sell the platform by mid-January.
Both TikTok and ByteDance are challenging the law in an appeals court in Washington. A three-judge panel heard oral arguments in the case last month and is expected to issue a ruling that could be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
