TikTok Lawsuit for Teenage Harm

The District of Columbia has filed a lawsuit against TikTok Inc., accusing the company of violating consumer protection laws by designing an addictive platform that harms children. The complaint alleges that TikTok knowingly employs coercive design tactics—such as algorithmic recommendations, infinite scroll, push notifications, and beauty filters—to manipulate young users into excessive engagement, leading to mental health risks, sleep deprivation, and financial exploitation. The lawsuit also claims that TikTok misleads users about its safety measures and runs an unlicensed money transmission system through its in-app virtual currency, TikTok Coins, which facilitates the financial exploitation of minors. The District seeks injunctive relief and monetary penalties to curb these alleged deceptive and harmful practices.

On January 17, the Supreme Court unanimously upheld a federal law banning TikTok in the United States beginning January 19–unless the app is sold by its China-based parent company, ByteDance Inc. The court ruled that the ban does not violate users’ or the company’s First Amendment rights and that Congress’s national security concerns regarding TikTok’s data collection practices were “well-supported.”

TikTok has more than 170 million users in the U.S., and while the app won’t disappear from their phones once the law takes effect, new users will not be able to download the app, and updates will not be available. This will eventually render the app unusable in the U.S. The law does allow for a 90-day pause on restrictions if progress toward a sale is made before January 19, but ByteDance says it has no plans to sell the company, despite investors’ interest.

Newly unsealed documents in a lawsuit against TikTok revealed that the company has known for years that its video livestream feature is rife with child sexual exploitation. The lawsuit, filed last June by the state of Utah, alleges that social media platform TikTok profited off child exploitation, but many of the internal documents used as evidence were previously redacted. On December 19, a state judge ruled to unseal the evidence, exposing years of internal TikTok documentation that suggest the company knowingly ignored the livestream issue because it helped their bottom line.

Utah’s Attorney General said that TikTok’s internal investigations found that adults were paying teens on TikTok LIVE to “strip, pose, and dance provocatively.” The unredacted documents showed that hundreds of thousands of TikTok LIVE creators were between 13 and 17 years old, despite the app requiring users to be 18 to go live.

On TikTok LIVE, viewers can send currency to LIVE creators—sometimes in exchange for sexual or otherwise exploitative acts. However, TikTok itself takes a cut of these payments—often up to 50 percent. Former Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes said TikTok has created a “virtual strip club” that connects minor victims to predators in real-time, then directly profits from that connection.

Leaked documents from the Kentucky Attorney General’s lawsuit against TikTok revealed that executives at the social media company were not concerned with the harm the app poses to American teenagers, according to NPR. The suit was one of 14 filed in October after a years-long investigation into TikTok by the attorneys general of several states. Each suit makes the same allegations—that TikTok was specifically designed to addict young users and that TikTok deceived the public about the risks of using its platform.

Unlike the 13 other state lawsuits, the Kentucky lawsuit was not redacted correctly, exposing over 30 pages of previously unseen internal documentation. The redacted portions of the suit included internal studies and communications regarding the dangers of TikTok for children. 

One internal document noted that the company knew that TikTok leads to a strong and constant urge to keep opening the app. The attorneys general claim these features are explicitly intended to addict young users. The document also shows that TikTok executives knew that compulsive usage has negative mental health effects and interferes with user’s sleep, school responsibilities, and social engagement.

The redacted material reveals that some remedial measures TikTok implemented to reduce screen time had a negligible impact, but the company touted the effectiveness of the features anyway. TikTok officials claim that the leaked documents have been taken out of context and misrepresent their commitment to safety.

The Attorneys General of 13 states and the District of Columbia filed suit against TikTok on October 8, asserting that the app’s addictive design features are doing damage to the mental health of children and teens. The goal of the suits, the Attorneys General say, is to stop TikTok from using addictive features, impose financial penalties, and collect damages for users who say the app has harmed them.

TikTok’s algorithm is at the core of each suit, and the suits claim that it and other design features like endless scrolling addict and harm children. According to AP News, the lawsuit from the D.C. Attorney General called TikTok’s algorithm “dopamine-inducing” and intentionally addictive, allegedly trapping young users into excessive use. D.C.’s suit also claimed that TikTok continues to push these features despite knowing that they will lead to psychological and physiological harm for users.

“While this case is specific to the “blackout challenge,” it has broader implications that apply to many SMVLC cases. This ruling will only apply in the Third Circuit (Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware) for now, but could be influential with other courts. We anticipate that TikTok will request a rehearing by the full Third Circuit and then review by the U.S. Supreme Court.  There is still a long way to go in these cases, but this is an important step! ” – SMVLC Attorney Glenn S. Draper

On August 27, 2024, the Philadelphia-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit reversed a Pennsylvania trial court’s order dismissing a “blackout challenge” case against TikTok and its parent company. The appellate panel held that in Anderson v. TikTok, TikTok’s algorithmic recommendation of a “blackout challenge” video to a 10-year-old girl who died as a result of attempting the challenge was not immune from liability under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996. This is the first time a court of appeals has allowed a “blackout challenge” case against TikTok to proceed.

Tawainna Anderson sued TikTok in 2022 after her daughter’s death in 2021 from attempting the challenge, which involved users of the app choking themselves until they passed out. Though federal law typically shields social media platforms from lawsuits over content posted by users, the Third Circuit ruled that the law does not bar Anderson from pursuing claims that TikTok’s algorithm specifically recommended the challenge to her daughter.

In the appellate panel’s opinion, U.S. Circuit Judge Patty Shwartz said that Section 230 only immunizes information provided by third parties, not recommendations TikTok itself made via an underlying algorithm. Shwartz said that a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in July, which held that a platform’s algorithm reflects “editorial judgments” about “compiling the third-party speech it wants in the way it wants,” meant that content curation using algorithms is first-party speech by the social media company itself, leaving it unprotected by Section 230.

For now, this ruling only applies in the Third Circuit, which contains Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware. However, because the opinion was marked as precedential, it will likely have broader implications for many social media harm lawsuits.