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California Attorney General Rob Bonta and New York Attorney General Letitia James led a bipartisan coalition of 14 of their counterparts in filing separate enforcement actions against TikTok for violations of state consumer protection laws.
Attorney General Bonta’s action, filed in Santa Clara County Superior Court, alleges that TikTok exploits and harms young users and misleads the public about the dangers of the social media platform, and seeks significant penalties, as well as injunctive and monetary relief, to address the social media platform’s misconduct.
Bonta noted that the investigation revealed that TikTok encourages social media addiction to increase corporate profits, and that it intentionally targets children because it knows they do not yet have the defenses or ability to create healthy boundaries around addictive content.
“When we look at the youth mental health crisis and the revenue machine TikTok has created, fueled by the time and attention of our young people, it is devastatingly obvious: our children and teens never stood a chance against these social media giants. TikTok must be held accountable for the harm it created by stealing the time and childhood of American children,” she stressed.
In that regard, New York Attorney General Letitia James explained that young people are experiencing mental health problems due to addictive social media platforms like TikTok.
“TikTok claims its platform is safe for young people, but that is far from true. In New York and across the country, young people have been killed or injured while completing dangerous TikTok challenges, and many more are feeling sadder, more anxious, and more depressed because of TikTok’s addictive features. Today, we are suing TikTok to protect young people and help combat the nationwide youth mental health crisis. Children and families across the country are desperate for help addressing this crisis, and we are doing everything we can to protect them,” she said.
And TikTok use is widespread among young people in the United States. By 2023, 63 percent of all Americans aged 13 to 17 who responded to a survey by the Pew Research Center study reported using TikTok, with the majority of American teens using the platform daily; 17 percent of American teens said they used TikTok “almost constantly.”
In the complaint, Attorney General Bonta alleges that TikTok violated California consumer protection statutes, the Unfair Competition Law (UCL), and the False Advertising Law (FAL).
According to the complaint, TikTok's misconduct stems from its underlying business model, which focuses on maximizing the time young users spend on the platform to allow the company to increase revenue by selling targeted advertising space.
TikTok’s misconduct includes implementing a content recommendation system designed to be addictive in order to maximize the time young users spend on the platform, as TikTok’s algorithmic features are designed to keep minors on the platform as long as possible and as frequently as possible, despite the dangers of compulsive use, the complaint says.
In addition, she says, TikTok uses manipulative features to create addiction among young users and maximize their time on the platform. These features exploit children's psychological vulnerabilities and are used to keep children and teenagers on the platform for longer.
Added to this are the beauty filters and effects that are deeply harmful to young users, as they encourage unrealistic beauty standards, damage self-esteem and can induce negative body image issues and related physical and mental disorders.
Autoplay is also flagged, stating that this is used to manipulate users into compulsively spending more time on the platform, without allowing them to disable the feature.
She also cites endless scrolling, which she says forces young users to spend more time on the platform as it makes it difficult for them to switch off. It removes a natural stopping point or opportunity to move on to a new activity and distorts users' perception of time.
There are also stories and Lives, push notifications that unfairly attract young users by overloading and overwhelming them to return to the platform; likes and comments, where in key stages of development, it can be extremely important for children and adolescents to be accepted by their peers.
"TikTok's design and the way it highlights 'likes' as a form of social validation has a particularly powerful effect on young users and can neurologically alter teens' perception of online posts, as well as drive compulsive use," she says.
In this regard, he says that, despite knowing that certain users are under 13 years old and despite the fact that the platform is aimed at children, TikTok has collected and used personal information from children's accounts without parental consent or notice. Doing so is unfair and does not comply with TikTok's obligations under federal law.
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