Fourteen states have filed suit against TikTok, claiming the social media platform harms the mental health of young users and collects their data without consent. Each lawsuit was filed individually.
The lawsuits, led by the attorneys general of New York and California, say the platform violated the law by “falsely claiming that its platform is safe for young people.”
The lawsuits highlight what the plaintiffs call “addictive features.” These include things present in many modern social media apps, such as 24/7 notifications and autoplay videos.
However, the lawsuits also focus on “dangerous TikTok challenges.” There are so many of these challenges that have led people to do everything from overdosing on Benadryl to tampering with electrical outlets. “Young people are struggling with their mental health because of addictive social media platforms like TikTok,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement.
“TikTok claims that their platform is safe for young people, but that is far from the truth.” It’s worth noting that the above challenges were issued by other TikTok users, not the platform itself.
However, the lawsuits attempt to illustrate TikTok’s “underlying business model,” which is alleged to “maximize young users’ time on the platform so that the company can increase revenue by selling targeted ads.”
Various lawsuits also suggest that TikTok allows the sexual exploitation of its young users, through a proprietary currency and a live streaming component.
The TikTok Live platform is technically for adults only, but one lawsuit alleges that “lax age verification measures encourage U.S. minors to lie about their age in order to gain access.”
Once live, users can receive currency from viewers. The lawsuit states that the practices “expose other serious harms to minors, including sexual exploitation” and that “TikTok is fully aware that these features together create an environment where children are frequently sexually exploited by users, but it has turned a blind eye in favor of increasing its profitability.”
The lawsuit also accuses TikTok and parent company ByteDance of collecting data from young users without consent. This isn’t a new complaint, as the Justice Department filed a lawsuit in August accusing TikTok of collecting personal information from children on the platform and failing to comply with requests to delete that data. Texas also recently sued the platform for violating child privacy laws.
Today’s lawsuits seek to impose financial penalties on the platform, including “disgorging all profits from the deceptive and illegal practices and recovering damages for users who were harmed.” TikTok has responded to these lawsuits, saying that “we strongly disagree with these claims.” The platform has called these claims “false and misleading.”
It listed all the “strong safeguards” it has implemented to protect children, including “default screentime limits, pairing with family, and privacy by default for minors under the age of 16.”
All of this is happening while parent company ByteDance has to decide to either sell TikTok to a non-Chinese buyer or face a nationwide ban. The current deadline for this decision is January 17, but the company’s lawyers recently argued that the terms of this law were unconstitutional.