A bipartisan coalition of 14 attorneys general, led by Rob Bonta of California and Letitia James of New York, sued TikTok in separate lawsuits on Tuesday for addicting children to the social-media platform and harming their mental health.
Bonta and James cite various TikTok features, including the personalized “For You” feed that endlessly recommends videos to users. Minors are especially susceptible to the constant dopamine rush that the platform’s algorithm provides. Other harmful features include beauty filters, autoplay, endless scrolling, and late-night push notifications.
“Teen overuse of social media, including TikTok, has broad, harmful impacts on virtually every indicator of youth mental unwellness,” New York’s suit states, “including increased rates of major depressive episodes and anxiety, body image problems and eating disorders, sleep disturbance, loneliness, suicidal ideation, and suicide attempts.”
TikTok is also accused of collecting and monetizing data on children under 13 years old without parental consent in violation of a federal law designed to protect children’s data online. Despite publicly claiming its app is not for minors younger than 13, TikTok considers those users to be a “critical demographic,” per internal data cited in the filings.
The company allegedly uses its data to target children with advertisements featuring “characters, franchises, and subject matter appealing to children,” according to California’s suit.
It’s unclear how many TikTok users are under 13, as most of the internal data is redacted in the complaints.
According to a 2023 Pew Research survey, 63 percent of all Americans between the ages of 13 and 17 said they use TikTok, and 58 percent of teenagers reported using it daily. Of those respondents, 17 percent said they were on TikTok “almost constantly.”
TikTok had 170 million monthly active users in the U.S. as of January and boasted a total of 1.04 billion monthly active users worldwide as of May. It is expected to reach 1.8 billion users by the end of the year.
“We strongly disagree with these claims, many of which we believe to be inaccurate and misleading,” a TikTok spokesperson told CNN in response to the litigation. “We’re proud of and remain deeply committed to the work we’ve done to protect teens and we will continue to update and improve our product. We provide robust safeguards, proactively remove suspected underage users, and have voluntarily launched safety features.”
Tuesday’s lawsuits add to the legal pressure that TikTok is facing. It is currently battling a U.S. ban on the app slated to take effect January 19, 2025, unless it severs ties with Chinese parent company ByteDance and finds a U.S. buyer. The ban’s date could be extended another three months if a sale is in the works.
TikTok has also been hit with lawsuits from the Justice Department and at least 23 state attorneys general over children’s collected data and mental-health concerns.
On Tuesday, California’s Bonta and New York’s James were joined by the attorneys general from Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oregon, South Carolina, Vermont, Washington, and the District of Columbia. Each state filed a complaint in their own jurisdiction.
“Our investigation has revealed that 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.”
“TikTok claims that their platform is safe for young people, but that is far from true,” James declared in a separate statement. “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.”