N.J. Attorney General Matthew Platkin is suing TikTok, accusing the China-based company of violating consumer protection laws by exploiting children's vulnerabilities and contributing to their mental health issues.
In a 98-page lawsuit filed Tuesday in state Superior Court in Essex County, Platkin claims the short-form video app is designed to be addictive, specifically for American children. A dozen other states, led by Republicans and Democrats, filed similar lawsuits Tuesday. (A copy of New Jersey's lawsuit if embedded at the end of this article.)
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At a press conference announcing the lawsuit, Platkin said the more he learned about TikTok — both as a parent and the state's chief law enforcement officer — the more he became "horrified and alarmed" by the app.
"TikTok's algorithms and design decisions are intended to cause young users to compulsively spend increasing amounts of time on the platform. Autoplay, infinite scroll, and the platform's recommendation system are all design features that feed into these vulnerabilities," he said. "In other words, TikTok built a platform to exploit teens for profit."
The lawsuit outlines the "manipulative and dark-pattern features" it alleges TikTok, owned by Byte Dance, uses to coerce youth into habitual use while also mining their data. With a business model depending on maximizing ad revenue, TikTok sees users as "profit opportunities," the lawsuit states.
"TikTok has built algorithms, deployed dark patterns, and adopted features like beauty-enhancing filters, Autoplay, and push notifications to prompt youth to need more and more "reward" stimuli from the Platform. And it's working," the lawsuit states.
This excessive and compulsive use comes at a crucial time of social development for young people, according to the lawsuit. Beyond the negative consequences of lack of socializing, teens also report increased levels of depression, anxiety, self-harm, sleep deprivation, and eating disorders due to social media, it alleges.
TikTok has a separate version of the app in China. There, the app is limited to certain hours for young users and requires a five-second pause between videos when they spend too much time on the app, according to the suit. But Platkin stressed that TikTok sees the "children of New Jersey and sees only dollar signs."
Following criticism and legal action, TikTok implemented certain tools alerting users when they've been on the app for too long, but Platkin said those were "only to appease its critics, not to actually save our kids."
While the company advertises to parents that teen accounts automatically have a 60-minute daily limit, it doesn't disclose that limit can be easily bypassed or disabled, the lawsuit states.
Cari Fais, the state's acting consumer affairs director and a co-plaintiff, compared the app's algorithm and misleading marketing tactics targeting vulnerable users to the actions of the tobacco and opioid industries.
"The ugly truth is that, despite knowing the harm its platform is causing to a generation of children and despite claiming to have implemented features to limit those harms, TikTok continues to use unconscionable practices aimed at turning our children into social media addicts," she said. "And TikTok's deceptive conduct prevents children and their parents from making informed decisions."
Portions of the lawsuit relating to TikTok's internal documents, its business model, and interviews with employees are redacted.
This is not the first time Platkin has gone after a social media company he's accused of harming children's mental health. Last year, New Jersey joined 32 other states in a lawsuit against Meta, saying the company designed Facebook and Instagram to intentionally addict children and teens.
"If you are saying things to the public about the safety of your products, knowing that they are not safe, we're going to hold you accountable. And we're not afraid of a steady stream of large and well-resourced law firms coming in and trying to convince us that we're wrong," he said. "We're not afraid of taking on the biggest companies in the world."
TikTok faces an uncertain future in the United States, as the app's American operations will have to divest from its China-based parent company per a new federal law. If not, it could be banned by mid-January. The app has more than 170 million monthly users in the United States.