Kentucky, Illinois join others to sue Tik Tok over damage to kids' mental health

 Attorneys general from Kentucky, Illinois and a dozen other states and the District of Columbia filed lawsuits against TikTok on Tuesday, saying that the popular short-form video app is designed to be addictive to kids and harms their mental health.

The lawsuits stem from a national investigation into TikTok, which was launched in March 2022 by a bipartisan coalition of attorneys general from many states, including New York, California, Kentucky and New Jersey. All of the complaints were filed in state courts.

At the heart of each lawsuit is the TikTok algorithm, which powers what users see on the platform by populating the app’s main “For You” feed with content tailored to people’s interests. The lawsuits note TikTok design features that they say addict children to the platform, such as the ability to scroll endlessly through content, push notifications that come with built-in “buzzes” and face filters that create unattainable appearances for users.

The latest lawsuits come nearly a year after dozens of states sued Instagram parent Meta Platforms Inc. in state and federal courts for harming young people and contributing to the youth mental health crisis by knowingly and deliberately designing addictive features that keep kids hooked on their platforms.

Keeping people on the platform is “how they generate massive ad revenue,” District of Columbia Attorney General Brian Schwalb said in an interview. “But unfortunately, that’s also how they generate adverse mental health impacts on the users.”

The legal challenges, which also include Google’s YouTube, are part of a growing reckoning against social media companies and their effects on young people’s lives. In some cases, the challenges have been coordinated in a way that resembles how states previously organized against the tobacco and pharmaceutical industries.

TikTok, though, is facing an even bigger obstacle, as its very existence in the U.S. is in question. Under a federal law that took effect earlier this year, TikTok could be banned from the U.S. by mid-January if its China-based parent company, ByteDance, doesn’t sell the platform by then. Both TikTok and ByteDance are challenging the law at an appeals court in Washington. A panel of three judges heard oral arguments in the case last month and are expected to issue a ruling, which could be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Also on Tuesday, 22 other states including Alabama, Colorado, Florida and Michigan filed an amicus brief urging a Tennessee court to force TikTok to produce documents related to a multistate investigation that those attorney general offices say TikTok is withholding or destroying.

When TikTok failed to produce the requested information last year, 46 states including Minnesota filed an amicus brief in support of Tennessee. The amicus brief they filed Tuesday supports Tennessee’s continued efforts to compel TikTok’s compliance.

The full list of states and territories included in that lawsuit include:

California
Illinois
Kentucky
Louisiana
Massachusetts
Mississippi
New Jersey
New York
North Carolina
Oregon
South Carolina 
Vermont
Washington
District of Columbia



(AP Photo Damian Dovarganes)