Utah on Tuesday filed a lawsuit against TikTok, saying the video app knowingly uses technology to keep children engaged with material that is often harmful.
“The harms to children need to stop,” Gov. Spencer Cox said as he announced the suit at a news conference.
The consumer protection lawsuit, filed in Salt Lake City state court, says that TikTok uses technology that aims to keep children on the app despite known mental health harms that correlate to time spent engaging with social media.
Utah has accused the app, based in Culver City, California, of using algorithms to target children with content that is sometimes violent and distressing through its “recommendation engine” in order to keep them looking at the app.
The company rejects Utah’s allegations.
“TikTok has industry-leading safeguards for young people, including an automatic 60-minute time limit for users under 18 and parental controls for teen accounts,” a spokesperson for the app said. “We will continue to work to keep our community safe by tackling industry-wide challenges.”
In March, amid lawmakers’ efforts to ban TikTok, company CEO Shou Zi Chew told Congress the app is safe and secure for teenagers. At the time, the app reached 150 million active U.S. users — nearly half the population. Its ad revenue last year was nearly $10 billion, according to Utah’s suit.
At Tuesday’s news conference, Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes likened TikTok to “a slot machine that hooks kids’ attention and does not let them go.”
Among the technology deployed is “infinite scroll,” which provides fresh videos targeted at a particular user, the suit claimed. Another tool is “filter bubbles” that feed a user more extreme reels of the types of videos that pique their interest, it alleged.
“TikTok directly profited from addicting children to the app and continued to capitalize on the addictive nature of the app despite knowing the harm that addiction would cause Utah’s children,” the state’s suit said.
Utah has the highest percentage of children per capita in the nation, at more than one in four people, the attorney general’s office said. Nearly 80 percent of the state’s K-12 students spend two or more hours each day on screens, not counting learning engagement at school or for homework, it said in the suit.
In it’s lawsuit, Utah also alleges that claims TikTok fails to verify users’ ages; does not remove all child abuse sexual material or clips dealing with self-harm and eating disorders; fails to adequately address negative mental health effects associated with teens’ use of social media; does not adequately screen out child predators; fails to rein in dangerous video challenges involving asphyxiation and bone-breaking; and lies to the public about its commitment to protecting children and about its ties to China, where the app originated in 2017.
“TikTok has lied to parents to create a false sense of security,” Reyes said.
Some of the company’s actions or lack of action amount to violations of the Utah Consumer Sales Practices Act, the suit claimed.
It seeks corrective action and damages “well in excess of $300,000,” according to the court filing.
Other states, including Arkansas and Indiana, have also filed suits against TikTok with similar allegations. Montana was the first state to ban, but creators and the app have challenged the move.