Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes sued TikTok on Thursday, accusing
the social media giant of intentionally addicting and endangering
Arizona children and teens.
Mayes says TikTok, the short-form
video streaming app that widely popularized “infinite scroll,”
engineered its platform to maximize compulsive use among minors —
including children under age 13 — by deploying manipulative design
tactics “like auto-play, reward loops featuring harmful content,
social‑comparison metrics, push notifications and harmful
appearance‑altering filters.”
She says the features are designed to attract young users and keep them engaged for as long as possible.
“TikTok
has repeatedly and knowingly violated the Arizona Consumer Fraud Act by
designing one of the most addictive products ever targeted at children —
and by concealing the severe mental, physical and emotional‑health
risks these design choices create,” Mayes said in a press release.
A TikTok spokesperson denied the claims in an email to Courthouse News.
“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,” they said. “We will
vigorously defend against these claims.“Filed Thursday morning in
Maricopa County Superior Court, Mayes asserts in her consumer protection complaint
that TikTok minimizes or entirely fails to disclose potential harms
like increased risks of depression, anxiety, sleep disruption,
disordered eating, body‑image distress and self‑harm. TikTok’s
content-moderation practices are inadequate to prevent minors from
consuming increasingly harmful or age-inappropriate content, she claims.
Mayes’ lawsuit is her latest in a series of consumer protection actions against tech giants like Amazon and Temu. In August, she negotiated alongside 46 other attorneys general a multibillion-dollar settlement with Meta Platforms Inc.,
owner of Facebook and Instagram, over similar teen addiction claims
made in federal court. TikTok was a defendant in the lawsuit but has not
agreed to the same settlement. Instead, it entered a $100 million
settlement agreement with the state of Alabama, which could grow if
other states join.
TikTok’s settlement with Alabama
mirrors safety provisions Meta agreed to, including a two-hour daily
time limit for teens, restricted access from midnight to 6 a.m. and
suspended notifications during school hours. It will also strengthen age
verification, ban beauty filters for teenagers and offer young users a
nonpersonalized content feed.
“Arizona’s children are paying the
price for TikTok’s pursuit of profit,” Mayes said. “We will not tolerate
a global corporation putting our kids’ health, privacy and safety at
risk to increase advertising revenue. This lawsuit, like the landmark
lawsuit against Meta, is necessary to stop TikTok’s unlawful practices,
hold the company accountable and protect Arizona families from further
harm.”
TikTok claims to prohibit users younger than 13, but Mayes
accuses the company of knowingly allowing younger users and, worse,
enabling child sexual exploitation and the circulation of child sexual
abuse material through “post‑in‑private” accounts.
TikTok also
markets a 60-minute screen time limit, but in her complaint, Mayes says
the limits are ineffective and easily disabled.
“TikTok touts its
supposed safety measures to convince parents that this product is safe
for young people,” she said. “But behind the company’s marketing is a
platform engineered to exploit the vulnerabilities of developing brains,
pushing Arizona kids toward compulsive use, harmful content and
dangerous behaviors while failing to protect them from adults who use
the social media platform to groom or solicit minors. It’s
unconscionable.”
Finally, Mayes accuses TikTok of withholding
certain safety features from some users for “placebo testing,” without
users’ knowledge.
“None of these material facts, then known to
TikTok, were shared with its users, the public at large, with Arizona
teens or their parents, or even with Congress in response to
questioning,” she says in the complaint.
Mayes lodges counts of
Arizona Consumer Fraud Act violations; deceptive acts and practices;
unlawful concealments and omissions; and unfair practices.
She
asks that a state judge order injunctive relief, disgorge TikTok of all
profits made through the accused deceptive acts, and order the platform
to pay up to $10,000 for each willful violation. In a similar state
court case in New Mexico, a jury ordered Meta to pay nearly $220 billion
after calculating the number of consumer fraud violations against users
in the state. Though the judge will likely lower that penalty to
account for due process concerns, TikTok’s penalties in Arizona could
easily reach the millions if it’s found liable.
TikTok has not responded to a request for comment.
