Massachusetts, New York, California, New Jersey among states filing lawsuit against TikTok for alleged unfair and deceptive practices

BOSTON – Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell today filed a lawsuit in Suffolk Superior Court against TikTok Inc. and its affiliated entities TikTok LLC, ByteDance Inc. and ByteDance Ltd. (collectively, “TikTok”) for allegedly intentionally designing its social media platform to be addictive and harmful to young users and deceiving the public about its efforts to keep its platform safe. The lawsuit alleges such conduct violates the Commonwealth’s consumer protection laws and has contributed to a youth mental health crisis among the hundreds of thousands of young people in the Commonwealth who use TikTok’s platform. A redacted complaint will be made available upon Court approval. 

TikTok is one of the largest social media platforms in the world and is particularly popular amongst U.S. teenagers, generating billions of dollars in advertising revenue each year. According to a Pew Research study cited in the complaint, hundreds of thousands of youth report using social media platforms like TikTok “almost constant[ly].” 

Today’s lawsuit alleges that TikTok’s own data and research confirmed the mental and physical harms associated with excessive and compulsive use, and yet TikTok deployed “coercive” design features intended to hook youth into spending as much time as possible on its platform – more than they would otherwise choose – to their detriment. As TikTok continued to specifically target U.S. youth with its harmful features, it deceived the public about the safety of its platform.  

“Massachusetts will not tolerate a future where companies exploit the vulnerabilities of young people for profit,” said AG Campbell. “Today’s lawsuit further demonstrates my office’s focus on the wellbeing of our children by laying out arguments that TikTok, primarily driven by greed, designed technology that leads young people to become compulsive and addicted users of the platform, harming their wellbeing and contributing to the ongoing youth mental health crisis across our country.” 

The Commonwealth’s complaint alleges that TikTok employs “infinite scroll,” “autoplay,” “constant push notifications,” and “ephemeral, fear-of-missing-out-inducing” features, amongst others, that work to override young users’ agency and psychologically manipulate them into compulsive and addictive use of the platform. In particular, TikTok’s internal data shows that young users spend excessive time on the platform, including a significant percentage of teens who use the platform during late night and overnight hours. 

AG Campbell’s Office stated that according to TikTok’s own records, TikTok was aware that such features led to addictive use amongst young people and was aware that such unhealthy compulsive use was associated with various psychological and physical harms to young people, including disrupted sleep, depression, increased loneliness, loss of analytical skills, memory formation, contextual thinking, conversational depth, and increased anxiety. 

The complaint further alleges that TikTok has deceptively asserted that its platform is safe and not designed to addict young users and maximize time spent, and that youth wellbeing is its highest priority. In fact, records indicate that TikTok rejected design changes that would reduce compulsive use, launched time management and content moderation tools that it knows are not effective, and retained other design features that are known to be harmful.   

The AG stated that research, including evidence described by the U.S. Surgeon General, has shown the negative impact of social media use on youth mental health.

“For example, after one hour of social media use per day, adolescent mental health steeply declines and decreases in happiness and self-esteem occur, alongside increases of self-harm, depression, and behavioral challenges. Research also shows that habitually checking social media can alter the brain chemistry of adolescents, changing the brain’s sensitivity to social rewards and punishments, with implications for long-term psychological adjustment.” 

In filing today’s complaint, AG Campbell seeks to bar TikTok from “continuing to engage in unfair and deceptive practices that harm young people”.   

Today’s lawsuit is being handled by Senior Trial Counsel Christina Chan and Privacy and Responsible Technology Division (PRTD) Chief Jared Rinehimer, with substantial assistance from PRTD Assistant Attorneys General Kaitlyn Karpenko, Aaron Davis, and Camy Ruck, Paralegal Grace Yuh, and Technologist Ekin Koker; Director Liza Hirsch and Assistant Attorney General Cassandra Thomson of the AG’s Children’s Justice Unit; Assistant Attorney General Adam Cambier of the AG’s Civil Rights Division; Assistant Attorney General Arjun Jaikumar of the AG’s Constitutional and Administrative Law Division; Senior Investigator Edward Cherubin of the AG’s Civil Investigations Division; Senior Trial Counsel Douglas Martland and Legal Analyst Nicholas Willing of the AG’s Public Protection and Advocacy Bureau; and Senior Trial Counsel Peter Downing of the AG’s Consumer Protection Division.  

AG Campbell’s Privacy and Responsible Technology Division (PRTD), which has a leading role in today’s lawsuit, was recently renamed from the Data Privacy and Security Division to better reflect the scope of the work done by the Division. In addition to enforcing state laws related to consumer data privacy and security, PRTD also works with staff from across the Office to investigate and curb dangers associated with modern technology, including by preventing harms of social media for young people, enforcing laws surrounding responsible online gambling and sports betting, and addressing other ways that technology may be misused to harm residents of the Commonwealth.  

Attorneys general from the following states join Attorney General Campbell in filing separate enforcement actions against TikTok today to hold it accountable for its role in the youth mental health crisis: California, New York, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, New Jersey, Oregon, South Carolina, Vermont, Washington, and the District of Columbia.  

Today’s lawsuits follow a multistate nationwide investigation, co-led by the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office, into TikTok’s impact on the safety and well-being of young people. 

Last fall, AG Campbell filed a similar lawsuit in Suffolk Superior Court against social media conglomerate Meta Platforms, Inc. (Meta) and its subsidiary, Instagram, alleging it engaged in unfair and deceptive practices that harm young people. The ongoing lawsuit alleges that Meta violated Massachusetts’ consumer protection laws by purposefully designing their applications to addict young users, and actively and repeatedly deceiving the public about the danger posed to young people by overuse of their products.