TikTok executives are aware of the dangers their app poses to teens, according to internal documents leaked as part of a more than two-year-long investigation into the popular video-sharing platform conducted by 14 U.S. attorneys general — reports NPR.
The investigation resulted in officials from several states filing lawsuits against TikTok this week. Internal TikTok communications, documents, and research data included in the complaints was redacted. However, faulty redactions in one of the lawsuits — filed by the Kentucky Attorney General’s Office — brought some of these documents and communications to light.
Kentucky Public Radio was able to copy-and-paste and publish excerpts of the material that was supposed to be redacted. A state judge has since sealed the entire complaint in response to a request from the attorney general’s office “to ensure that any settlement documents and related information, confidential commercial and trade secret information, and other protected information was not improperly disseminated.”
The Kentucky lawsuit, along with others like it, alleges that TikTok is harmful for teens and is designed to addict them despite the multi-billion-dollar company’s own research validating several child safety concerns.
“In under 35 minutes, an average user is likely to become addicted to the platform,” Kentucky authorities said in the redacted portion of the lawsuit. TikTok’s own research concluded that “compulsive usage correlates with a slew of negative mental health effects like loss of analytical skills, memory formation, contextual thinking, conversational depth, empathy, and increased anxiety,” per the suit.
According to another internal document, the company knew that TikTok’s many features designed to keep young people on the app contributed to developing a constant and irresistible urge to keep opening it.
In addition, the leaked documents show that TikTok recognized that “compulsive usage also interferes with essential personal responsibilities like sufficient sleep, work/school responsibilities, and connecting with loved ones.” Top-level execs knew the app’s addictiveness could cost kids sleep, nutrition, exercise, and face-to-face time with those around them.
Furthermore, the lawsuit reveals that TikTok didn’t believe tools to mitigate the platform’s potential harm to children — like break recommendations and other time-management tools — would significantly reduce screentime. The company launched these features anyway, even touting them as measures to improve teen safety.
Internal documents show that TikTok measured the success of a tool that allows parents to limit kids’ TikTok screentime by how it was “improving public trust in the TikTok platform via media coverage” instead of whether or not it had a marked impact on the time teens spent on the app.
Other portions of the redacted lawsuit revealed that TikTok also reworked its algorithm to boost videos featuring users the company viewed as “attractive” in the For You feed.
“Unfortunately, this complaint cherry-picks misleading quotes and takes outdated documents out of context to misrepresent our commitment to community safety,” Alex Haurek, a spokesperson for TikTok, said in a statement.
“We have robust safeguards, which include proactively removing suspected underage users, and we have voluntarily launched safety features such as default screentime limits, family pairing, and privacy by default for minors under 16,” he added.
The state lawsuits against TikTok come as the U.S. threatens the app with a nationwide ban unless it parts ways with its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, by January 2025. ByteDance, however, has firmly refused to sell off its flagship venture. The company is also taking legal action against the U.S. government over the sale mandate.
Several school boards in Canada have also sued TikTok, along with fellow social media platforms Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat, this year for allegedly creating unsafe and addictive products that harm students’ mental health and disrupt their education.
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All you need is to check what's TikTok doing in China and if it's in any way similar to the rest of the world….case closed, app banned. Oh, slap them with a 10Bn fine, I heard that the Demooocrats are spending like drunk sailors and might need the cashish.
Thank you captain obvious.
I know several adults who have gotten addicted to it just as quickly and it's mind boggling. I tried it for 20 seconds, hated it, and haven't used it since. It and youtube shorts are presenting far more harmful and false info to the world than anywhere else right now. How can you put 20 minutes of actual useful info in 30 seconds? Would be nice to see tiktok get banned completely. Let something better, more useful, come along.
Marketing companies and businesses love TikTok. TikTok is also the number one social media platform for misinformation including allowable misinformation.
Feeble minds are very susceptible to being easily influenced unlike STNG's "the Game" similar to how the world now is addicted to Wordle.
The amount of support for TikTok not just in first world countries (which is kind of understandable) but supposedly educated countries like Canada and the UK is unbelievable, like the support for White OJ in the USA running for President. The world has never been so unhinged in more than 250 years.