Thirteen states and Washington DC are filing to sue TikTok for being addictive and harming children’s mental health.
The lawsuits come after tension between TikTok and the US government. All cases have been taken to the state courts of the respective states.
State governments bringing charges against TikTok include New York, California, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Louisiana.
Since March 2022, the United States has been fighting TikTok. Multiple attempts have been made to ban the app, and a national investigation involving several states has been underway for over two years.
The Justice Department also sued TikTok for similar reasons in August. Their lawsuit claimed TikTok failed to protect children’s privacy. While TikTok has implemented parental control features and age limits, these are not considered sufficient.
Why are the states suing TikTok?
TikTok uses its algorithm to tailor its For You page to users’ interests. The feature is astoundingly efficient at what it is meant to do, which the states are worried could be getting kids addicted to scrolling through the app.
The lawsuits claim that features such as the ability to scroll endlessly, face filters that could potentially create a false self-image for children, and frequent buzzing for push notifications is causing mental health issues for children.
The District of Columbia lawsuit suing TikTok says the algorithm is “dopamine-inducing” and was designed to keep young users glued to the platform. Furthermore, they claim that TikTok knows that content addiction will lead children to “profound psychological and physiological harms.”
California Attorney General Robert Bonta discussed the lawsuit suing TikTok in his state and the app’s harm to children who use it.
“TikTok cultivates social media addiction to boost corporate profits,” Bonta said in a statement. “TikTok intentionally targets children because they know kids do not yet have the defenses or capacity to create healthy boundaries around addictive content.”
In New York, Attorney General Letitia James cited the harm to children’s mental health as their reason for the lawsuit.
“Young people are struggling with their mental health because of addictive social media platforms like TikTok,” said James in a statement.
New Jersey’s acting director of the state’s division of consumer affairs, Carl Fais, claimed that there is a worry that the entire generation of children growing up with TikTok could be addicts for the sake of TikTok’s bottom line.
“The ugly truth is that TikTok misrepresents its platform as being safe for young users when, in reality, it is designed to turn a generation of children into social media addicts for TikTok’s profit,” said Fais in a statement.