13 states and Washington, D.C. file suits against TikTok

Coordinated legal actions from 14 attorneys general allege TikTok is harming the mental health of children.

Lawsuits filed in state and district superior courts by the attorney general offices of California, New York, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, North Carolina, New Jersey, Oregon, South Carolina, Vermont, Washington, and the District of Columbia of intentionally designing its social media platform to be “addictive and harmful to young users” and being untruthful about efforts to keep its platform safe for U.S. users. 

The complaints allege that although TikTok’s own internal research and data indicates "excessive and compulsive" use of the platform causes mental and physical harm to young users, it still employs "coercive" design features such as infinite scroll and constant push notifications to “hook youth into spending as much time as possible on its platform – more than they would otherwise choose – to their detriment.”

"Massachusetts will not tolerate a future where companies exploit the vulnerabilities of young people for profit," Massachusetts attorney general Andrea Joy Campbell said in an official statement. "Today’s lawsuit further demonstrates my office’s focus on the wellbeing of our children by laying out arguments that TikTok, primarily driven by greed, designed technology that leads young people to become compulsive and addicted users of the platform, harming their wellbeing and contributing to the ongoing youth mental health crisis across our country."

The lawsuits seek to bar TikTok from continuing to engage in what they call “unfair and deceptive practices that harm young people.”

In addition, the attorney general’s office of the District of Columbia is filing suit accusing TikTok of violating Washington, D.C. law requiring a license to act as a money transmitter with its “coins” virtual currency system. 

In a post on the official TikTok Policy account on X (the social network formerly known as Twitter), the company said it strongly disagrees with what it called “inaccurate and misleading” lawsuit claims.

"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," TikTok said in the post. "We provide robust safeguards, proactively remove suspected underage users, and have voluntarily launched safety features such as default screentime limits, family pairing, and privacy by default for minors under 16."

TikTok also said it has been working with the attorneys general for more than two years.