Washington has joined 20 other states plus the District of Columbia by filing a lawsuit Tuesday against TikTok, alleging the social media platform targets youths to keep them hooked on the site to the point that usage damages their mental health.
As of Tuesday, eight states filed similar lawsuits. Another 12 plus Washington, D.C., are expected to file their lawsuits this week, according to a press release from the Washington Attorney General’s Office.
Washington’s lawsuit in King County Superior court charges TikTok with violating the state’s Consumer Protection Act.
The lawsuit alleges that TikTok has published misleading public statements about the platform’s content moderation, despite its own research showing the risks to young users, according to an Attorney General’s Office press release. Research shows that excessive social media use by youths correlates with increased poor mental health outcomes. That’s especially true for young girls, the news release said.
A 2023 U.S. Surgeon General report said excessive social media use by youths, children and adolescents poses risks of physical and psychological harm such as higher rates of depression, anxiety and attention deficit disorders. It can also lead to eating disorders, suicidal thoughts and body dysmorphia.
“I am one of the millions of parents across Washington who knows firsthand the hold TikTok and other social media apps have on kids,” Attorney General Bob Ferguson said in Tuesday’s press release. “TikTok is deceiving young people and their parents when it claims to look out for the safety of young users. Platforms like TikTok must be reformed and we know they are unwilling to do so on their own.”
TikTok employs an arsenal of harmful, addictive-by-design features tailored to exploiting, manipulating and capitalizing on young users’ still-developing brains, the news release said.
TikTok’s business model relies on maximizing user engagement. To keep young users coming back to the platform, TikTok designs algorithms to figure out what types of videos they like and push more of those types of videos to them. TikTok’s “infinite scroll” and autoplay features increase the likelihood that users will stay on the app for an excessive amount of time, the news release said.
TikTok also uses “age gating” — or screening a user based on his or her birth date — to prevent underage users from accessing some of the platform’s offerings. But age gating depends on a user truthfully reporting their own age, the news release said.
The Pew Research Center reported last year that 63% of all Americans age 13 to 17 used TikTok, and most teenagers in the U.S. report using TikTok daily. According to the research, 17% of teens say that they are on TikTok “almost constantly,” according to the attorney general’s office.