A group of more than a dozen states on Tuesday filed individual lawsuits against TikTok, charging that the wildly popular but controversial video app is deliberately set up to addict children and is harmful to their mental health.
The bipartisan coalition, led by the attorneys general for California and New York, includes a total of 13 states and the District of Columbia. The group alleges that TikTok violated state laws by falsely claiming its platform is safe for young people.
They charge that many of the video app's young users are struggling with poor mental health and body image issues due to the platform's addictive features and are getting injured or dying because of dangerous TikTok challenges that are created and promoted on the platform.
The lawsuits seek to stop those practices and impose financial penalties on the social media company.
"TikTok claims that their platform is safe for young people, but that is far from true," New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement, pointing to the deaths of young people caused by TikTok challenges, and the mental-health problems suffered by others.
"Today, we are suing TikTok to protect young people and help combat the nationwide youth mental health crisis," she said. "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."
TikTok released a statement saying that it strongly disagrees with the claims, adding that it believes many of them to be "inaccurate and misleading."Â
It argued that it has worked hard to protect teens, saying it has voluntarily put in place "robust safeguards" and proactively removed suspected underage users.
"We've endeavored to work with the attorneys general for over two years, and it is incredibly disappointing they have taken this step rather than work with us on constructive solutions to industrywide challenges," TikTok said.
The group of suing states say that's not the case and that TikTok's efforts have been more about public relations than protecting kids. Like other social media apps, TikTok is designed to keep users endlessly scrolling, with an algorithm feeding each user exactly what they want to see.
The attorneys general also said the app's highlighted "likes" and comments section acts as a form of social validation, potentially affecting teens' self-esteem, along with the app's use of beauty filters that can alter a user's appearance and also potentially hurt their self-image.
They said the beauty filters have been especially harmful to young girls, who end up thinking they don't look good unless they use them to edit their features, which could put them at risk of body image issues, eating disorders, body dysmorphia and other health-related problems.
The lawsuits reflect a growing backlash against many social media companies in regard to how they market themselves to and treat their youngest users.
Last year, a group of more than 30 states filed suit against Meta, the parent company of Facebook and WhatsApp, alleging that they're also designed to be addictive and are damaging to the mental health of kids. That case is still pending, but Meta has since rolled out sweeping safety updates designed to protect teens.
TikTok is also dealing with a US Department of Justice lawsuit accusing it and its China-based parent company, ByteDance, of violating children's privacy laws. In the suit, the government says the app knowingly allowed children under 13 years old to make and use accounts without parental consent; collected "extensive data" from those children; and didn't delete the accounts and data even when parents asked for that.
And TikTok still faces a US ban starting in January unless ByteDance sells it to a buyer deemed fit by US officials.
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have said TikTok could be used by China's government to spy on Americans or otherwise threaten national security. TikTok has denied those allegations.
Some free speech and digital rights groups also oppose the ban, saying that rather than singling out TikTok, what's really needed is a set of comprehensive digital privacy laws that would protect Americans' personal information. But if the government gets its way, it could require the removal of TikTok from US app stores.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a prominent digital rights group, said in a statement that it's "troubled" by the lawsuits.
"The states' claims regarding features like autoplay and endless scrolling are really just a smokescreen for their distaste for First Amendment-protected content," Aaron Mackey, the EFF's free speech and transparency litigation director, said in a statement, adding that he doubts there would be lawsuits if TikTok showed endless streams of videos about math problems and classical literature.
"Parents and minors, not states, should decide when and how young people use TikTok," he said, also reiterating the need for strong data privacy legislation to protect all TikTok users.