State AGs Launch Lawsuit Against TikTok for Harming Children

Attorneys general from over a dozen states and the District of Columbia on Tuesday announced lawsuits against TikTok, accusing the company behind the popular social media platform of deliberately making the site addictive for children and deceiving the public about its dangers.

"We're suing the social media giant TikTok for exploiting young users and deceiving the public about the dangers the platform poses to our youth," Democratic California Attorney General Rob Bonta explained Tuesday morning in San Francisco. "Together, with my fellow state AGs, we will hold TikTok to account, stop its exploitation of our young people, and end its deceit."

New York Attorney General Letitia James, also a Democrat, said in a statement that "young people are struggling with their mental health because of addictive social media platforms like TikTok."

"TikTok claims that their platform is safe for young people, but that is far from true," she continued. "In New York and across the country, young people have died or gotten injured doing dangerous TikTok challenges and many more are feeling more sad, anxious, and depressed because of TikTok's addictive features."

"Today, we are suing TikTok to protect young people and help combat the nationwide youth mental health crisis," James added. "Kids and families across the country are desperate for help to address this crisis, and we are doing everything in our power to protect them."

James' office said in a statement:

TikTok uses a variety of addictive features to keep users on its platform longer, which leads to poorer mental health outcomes. Multiple studies have found a link between excessive social media use, poor sleep quality, and poor mental health among young people. According to the U.S. surgeon general, young people who spend more than three hours per day on social media face double the risk of experiencing poor mental health outcomes, including symptoms of depression and anxiety.

According to James' office, TikTok's addictive features include:

• Around-the-clock notifications that can lead to poor sleep patterns for young users;
• Autoplay of an endless stream of videos that manipulates users into compulsively spending more time on the platform with no option to disable;
• Attention-grabbing content that keeps young users on the platform longer;
• TikTok "stories" and TikTok live content that is only available temporarily to entice users to tune in immediately or lose the opportunity to interact;
• A highlighted "likes" and comments section as a form of social validation, which can impact young users' self-esteem; and
• Beauty filters that alter one's appearance and can lower young users' self-esteem.

The attorneys general also accuse TikTok of violating the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, which is meant to shield children's online data; of falsely claiming that its platform is safe for children; and of lying about the effectiveness of its so-called safety tools meant to mitigate harms to youth.

In addition to California and New York, the following states are part of the new lawsuit: Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, North Carolina, New Jersey, Oregon, South Carolina, Vermont, and Washington. So is the District of Columbia.

All told, 23 states have now filed lawsuits targeting TikTok's harms to children. However, the issue is by no means limited to TikTok. Last October, dozens of U.S. states sued Meta—which owns the social media sites Facebook and Instagram—for allegedly violating consumer protection laws by designing their apps to be addictive, especially to minors.

Twitter, the social platform known as X since shortly after it was purchased by Elon Musk in 2022 for $44 billion, was sued in 2021 by child sex trafficking victims for allowing the publication of sexually explicit images of minors and refusing to remove them as requested by the plaintiffs and their parents.

Last month, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission published a report detailing how social media and streaming companies endanger children and teens who use their platforms. The report's publication sparked renewed calls for Congress to pass legislation including the Children and Teens' Online Privacy Protection Act and Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) to better safeguard minors against the companies' predatory practices.

However, rights groups including the ACLU condemned KOSA, which the civil liberties organization warned "would violate the First Amendment by enabling the federal government to dictate what information people can access online and encourage social media platforms to censor protected speech."

The two bills—which were overwhelmingly passed by the U.S. Senate in July—were last month approved for advancement in the House of Representatives.

In May 2023, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy issued an advisory on "the growing concerns about the effects of social media on youth mental health."

The White House simultaneously announced the creation of a federal task force "to advance the health, safety, and privacy of minors online with particular attention to preventing and mitigating the adverse health effects of online platforms."

Murthy has also called for tobacco-like warning labels on social media to address the platform's possible harms to children and teens.

Some critics are wary of singling out TikTok—which is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance—for political or xenophobic purposes.

Earlier this year, U.S. President Joe Biden signed into law a $95 billion foreign aid package containing a possible nationwide TikTok ban. The legislation requires ByteDance to sell TikTok to a non-Chinese company within a year or face a federal ban. TikTok subsequently sued the federal government over the potential ban.

Approximately 170 million Americans use TikTok, which is especially popular among members of Gen-Z and small-to-medium-sized businesses, and contributes tens of billions of dollars to the U.S. economy annually.

Evan Greer, who heads the digital rights group Fight for the Future, slammed the law as "one of the stupidest and most authoritarian pieces of tech legislation we've seen in years."

However, children's advocates welcomed the new lawsuits.

"We are pleased to see so many state attorneys general holding TikTok accountable for deliberately causing harms to young people," said Josh Golin, executive director of Fairplay. "Between state and private lawsuits, state legislation, and Federal Trade Commission enforcement actions, the tide is turning against Big Tech, and it's clear the status quo of social media companies harming kids cannot and will not continue."

"Now we need leaders in the House to join their Senate counterparts in passing the Kids Online Safety Act and the Children and Teens' Online Privacy Protection Act so that all platforms, not just those involved in legal settlements, will have to be safe by design for children from day one," Golin added.