14 Attorneys General Sue TikTok Over Mental Health Concerns in Youth
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In the latest update to the growing dialogue of social media’s mental health impact, 14 attorneys general are suing TikTok as part of a bipartisan coalition.
The attorneys general announced their lawsuit last Tuesday, claiming that the platform is harmful to children’s mental health, thanks to its addictive features. They also claim its content has led to injuries and deaths.
“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 true. In New York and across the country, young people have died or gotten injured doing dangerous TikTok challenges and many more are feeling more sad, anxious, and depressed because of TikTok’s addictive features.”
The 14 attorneys general each filed separate lawsuits, with the New York and California attorney generals leading the coalition.
This is the latest example of growing litigation against social media companies over mental health concerns. There are 594 social media harm lawsuits pending in multidistrict litigation in California against numerous social media platforms over mental health concerns.
Attorneys General Lawsuits Claim TikTok Puts Profit Before Safety
The newly filed lawsuits largely claim that TikTok has placed revenue and user engagement over the safety of those same users.
“Our investigation has revealed that TikTok cultivates social media addiction to boost corporate profits. TikTok intentionally targets children because they know kids do not yet have the defenses or capacity to create healthy boundaries around addictive content,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement.
“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’s devastatingly obvious.”
The lawsuits also claim viral TikTok challenges have led to injuries and deaths in children, citing an example where a 15-year-old boy died while trying to stand on top of a moving subway car after he had watched TikTok videos of “subway surfing.”
The effectiveness of TikTok’s safety tools, such as screen time limits and restricted mode features, are also called into question. According to NPR, internal TikTok communications have shown that the company’s internal studies revealed its remedial measures like screen time limits would have a small impact.
Lawsuits Over Social Media Mental Health Concerns Span Numerous Companies
The attorneys general lawsuits against TikTok are far from the first litigation to pop up over concerns that social media platforms are damaging to mental health.
The nearly 600 lawsuits pending in a California MDL have been filed against the owners of numerous major social media platforms like TikTok, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. These cases claim those platforms are defective in that they exist to increase engagement, addiction and may have led to serious mental health issues.
Some of the concerns listed include self-harm and eating disorders, including physical harms as serious as death.
Social media has long been tied to mental health concerns. Documents from Meta that were released by a whistleblower in 2021, for example, showed that one in three teen girls who used Instagram felt bad about their bodies and had higher rates of mental health issues.
Editor Lindsay Donaldson contributed to this article.
