On Tuesday, Pennsylvania took a major step in the fight against the negative impacts of social media, particularly on children. The state sued TikTok, the massive platform that it said nearly 100 million Americans use every day.
Attorney General Dave Sunday said his office filed the lawsuit against the social media giant in Allegheny County court, alleging it violated the state consumer protection law.
“To achieve a 13-plus age rating in app stores, TikTok claims mature audience content is infrequent on their apps,” Sunday said.
Specifically, the complaint alleges that through its 13-plus age rating in app stores, TikTok misrepresents the app as age-appropriate for teens as young as 13 who end up consuming adult content like profanity, drinking, drug use and sexually suggestive situations.
“That age rating gives parents the illusion of safety but actually opens the door to putting content literally in the palm of our kids’ hands whenever they want it,” Sunday said.
The commonwealth also accuses TikTok of intentionally designing a platform to be addictive to young people with an infinite scroll that in turn helps the company’s bottom line but at the cost of children’s mental well-being and development.
“Ignoring that young people are most susceptible to and harmed by those very features,” Sunday said.
Dr. Candice Biernesser, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh, said there’s no documented evidence to say that social media causes addiction. Rather, there are features that teenagers talk about being problematic and that they have a hard time disconnecting from. She said apps just need better guardrails.
“There are a lot of ways that we could moderate some of these experiences specifically for young people,” Dr. Biernesser said. “They can experience creativity and entertainment on social media that we all do from time to time, but in ways that could be considerably safer.”
It’s something Sunday claims TikTok has considered but hasn’t implemented.
KDKA reached out to TikTok for co mment. A spokesperson provided the following statement:
“This lawsuit relies on misleading and inaccurate claims and deliberately ignores the concrete safety measures TikTok has voluntarily implemented to support the well-being of our community. Teen accounts have 50 preset safety, privacy and security settings built-in, and TikTok’s Family Pairing tools give parents direct control over screen time and content filters. We will vigorously defend against these claims.”
Sunday said those controls and filters are easily circumvented. He’s seeking transparency with age restriction and verification changes through this suit, saying this is just a first step, indicating more action against other social media companies in the near future.
“There are wonderful, amazing things that come with technology, but it is critical that technology does not evolve and happen at such a cost to our children,” Sunday said. “We are the people that are tasked with having to fight this fight to protect kids, and they’re worth it.”
