14 US States sue TikTok over failure to protect children

The District of Columbia and 13 other US states have filed lawsuits against social media platform, TikTok, over its failure to protect the mental health of young ones.

The legal actions were filed on Tuesday, according to reports.

The lawsuits which were filed independently accuse TikTok of harming children.

The states hold that the platform is addictive to young ones and seek financial fines against them.

The genesis of the lawsuits is a national investigation kickstarted in March 2022 by attorneys general from several states, including Kentucky, California and New Jersey.

TikTok’s algorithm which is commonly found in the “For You” is the center of the litigation.

Features like endless scrolling, push notifications with “buzzes,” and face filters, the Attorneys argue, create beauty standards that cannot be attained, which in turn causes addiction and harm to users’ mental health.

New York, California, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, North Carolina, New Jersey, Oregon, South Carolina, Vermont, and Washington are the states instituting the lawsuit.

In a separate lawsuit against TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance, the Justice Department has sued for violation of children’s privacy laws.

The District of Columbia, in its suit, accused the Chinese-based firm of trapping young ones to their platform by making it excessively addictive.

“It is profiting off the fact that it’s addicting young people to its platform,” District of Columbia Attorney General Brian Schwalb said in a recent interview.

Schwalb argues that the platform, in a bid to “generate massive ad revenue,” also generates adverse mental health impacts on the users.”

While TikTok claims that children aged 13 are not allowed to sign up and that, anyone under the age of 18 is restricted from certain content, the states argue that the restriction can easily be bypassed by children.