“TikTok claims that their platform is safe for young people, but that is far from true,” said New York Attorney General Letitia James, who leads the coalition along with California Attorney General Rob Bonta.

“In New York and across the country, young people have died or gotten injured doing dangerous TikTok challenges and many more are feeling more sad, anxious and depressed because of TikTok’s addictive features,” James said.

TikTok says it strongly disagrees with the claims and believes many of them are inaccurate and misleading. The company said it provides robust safeguards and has voluntarily launched features such as screen-time limits and privacy by default for users under age 16.

TikTok has amassed an audience of tens of millions of users, including many children and young people, by serving up catchy short videos using a secretive algorithm that seems to tap viewers’ deepest desires. But critics have slammed the app’s allegedly addictive aspects and its hosting of trendy challenges that have enticed users, particularly young people, to engage in antisocial or dangerous behavior.

James noted that a 15-year-old Manhattan boy who died in 2023 while subway surfing—riding on the outside of a subway car—allegedly had subway surfing videos in his TikTok account. The attorney general also pointed to the so-called Kia Challenge, a TikTok trend where a number of videos showed users how to steal certain Kia and Hyundai models.

TikTok is accused of violating New York law against false advertising by claiming that the app is safe for young users and by failing to disclose its adverse health consequences. The company is also accused of negligence and for violating product liability law.

New York has asked a Manhattan judge to order TikTok to turn over profits from ads directed at teens and preteen users in the state, and to pay punitive damages. The state cited a Harvard University study showing that TikTok in 2022 generated $2 billion from U.S.-based users aged 13 to 17.

The coalition filing the lawsuits is made up of attorneys general for several other jurisdictions: Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oregon, South Carolina, Vermont, Washington and the District of Columbia.

The attorneys general chose to file the lawsuits in their own courts rather than as a single action in federal court, which could complicate TikTok’s efforts to defend against the allegations.

So far, 23 attorneys general have filed actions against TikTok over its conduct toward youth, according to California’s Bonta. These include existing actions under way from attorneys general for Utah, Nevada, Indiana, New Hampshire, Nebraska, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas and Texas.

President Biden in April signed bipartisan legislation that would force TikTok, which is owned by Beijing-based ByteDance, to sever ties with China if it wants to keep operating in the U.S.

TikTok has challenged that legislation in court, citing free speech arguments, but in September faced skepticism from appeals court judges. The intelligence community has warned that China might be able to exploit the app, which has about 170 million U.S. users.

By Richard Vanderford, The Wall Street Journal
Read More Here