New blow for TikTok in the United States. A coalition of 14 attorneys general, led by the States of California and New York, sued the popular Chinese platform this Tuesday for its role in the mental health crisis of minors. “TikTok claims to be safe for young people, but this is far from the truth. Throughout the country there are young people who have died or been injured doing some of its challenges and many more feel sad, anxious and depressed due to the addictive features of the application,” said Letitia James, the New York attorney general.
The authorities’ legal offensive targets the various algorithms that form the heart of the platform. These feed the inexhaustible feed “for you” that users consume in the form of video and that begins playing as soon as the application is opened. The content is made up of recommendations based on the interests of each of the tiktokers. The lawsuit claims that the feature is addictive and that it was designed by engineers to increase the hours that young people spend within the application.
The lawsuit claims that the social network has launched a series of products that help keep its audience captive. One of these are the famous filters or effects, which allow you to alter the appearance of photos and videos. “These encourage young people to alter their image and imitate plastic surgery and harbor unrealistic standards of beauty, creating dysmorphic disorders that impact self-esteem and induce negative thoughts about their body image,” says the document, which has a good part of its tested content.
The coalition is made up of Democratic and conservative state prosecutors. The lawsuit takes the findings made by a national investigation carried out two years ago on the powerful social network, which reached 150 million monthly users in the United States last year. 63% of Americans between 13 and 17 years old use the platform, according to a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2023. 17% of adolescents admit to entering it “constantly.”
“TikTok specifically targets children because it knows that minors do not have the defenses or the ability to create healthy boundaries in the face of addictive content,” said Rob Bonta, the Californian attorney general. The Democratic official has blamed the platform for fueling “a mental health crisis.” “Our children and teenagers don’t stand a chance against these social media giants. “TikTok must be held accountable for the damage it has done by taking time away from our childhood,” Bonta said.
Brian Schwalb, the Washington DC prosecutor, also accused the social network of “getting rich by making young people addicted.” His office calls TikTok’s algorithm a “dopamine producer” that keeps users hooked. These enter, according to the prosecutor, into a “floating state” thanks to the infinite content that passes in front of their eyes, distorting the passage of time. Prosecutors are seeking to have TikTok pay fines and create a fund to compensate for the harm caused to American youth.
The lawsuit also talks about some features that are not limited to TikTok, such as stories that disappear after 24 hours, something that can also be found in Meta products such as Instagram, Facebook and Whatsapp. Likewise, he criticizes the constant bombardment of notifications that young people receive by default on TikTok to attract their attention even when the app is not in use.
The coup by the 14 States extends a legal battle against the Chinese company that has been going on for some years. The Department of Justice filed a lawsuit in August against TikTok for collecting and storing information about its users, including millions of children under 13, without parental consent. Washington argues that this is a violation of federal child protection law, since the platform allowed minors to create accounts to watch and upload videos and interact with other users, some of them adults, through messages.
ByteDance, the parent company of the popular application, has also put on the gloves to fight in court against the US Government. The company’s lawyers went to court in May to stop the law that forces ByteDance to sell TikTok to continue operating in the United States, one of its largest markets outside China. The lawyers argue that the rule promulgated by President Joe Biden is an “unprecedented violation” of freedom of expression, a right protected by the first amendment of the Constitution. ByteDance representatives pointed out before the appeals circuit that the sale requested by Washington “is not possible (…) neither commercially, nor technologically, nor legally.”