California joins 13 other states in suing TikTok over alleged harm it causes to teen users

A new lawsuit from fourteen attorneys general is going after TikTok for its “challenge” videos that have been killing teens across the country, even claiming there’s an economy of nude videos of minors running a “virtual strip club” on the platform have created.

Government officials have long claimed that the short-form social media app TikTok is deliberately harmful to children and teens, and is designed to get kids hooked on it while encouraging them to do dangerous things. And there’s a clear profit motive for TikTok to do whatever it takes to remain the go-to app for young people. But CBS News reports that 14 states have just sued TikTok for harming the health of young people, pointing to the clear threat of those highly unsafe “TikTok Challenges,” and even claiming that the platform allows sharing of nude teen videos, making the platform becomes a ‘virtual comic’. club.”

And yes, California is one of fourteen states suing TikTok.

“Our investigation has shown that TikTok cultivates social media addiction to increase corporate profits,” Attorney General Bob Bonta said in an announcement Tuesday. “TikTok intentionally targets children because they know children don’t yet have the defenses or ability to create healthy boundaries around addictive content.”

That’s actually a pretty mild statement, considering the seriousness of some of these allegations.

You’ve probably heard of these very dangerous ‘TikTok challenges’, where kids sometimes perform life-threatening stunts. Early this year, two Bay Area teenagers died while riding at the top of BART trains while making these very “challenging” videos. Last year, five children in New York died from the same ‘challenge’. At the time, BART Board Chairman Bevan Dufty told NBC Bay Area that “there has to be some involvement with social media companies.”

And we didn’t know that teens can buy a digital currency called TikTok Coins to pay livestreamers. As seen above, Washington DC Attorney General Brian Schwalb says users are using these coins to pay for livestream stripteases, sometimes filmed by minors. “TikTok profits from the sexual exploitation of children – operating as a virtual strip club,” says Schwalb.

It is not surprising that TikTok responds that their platform is very safe for minors.

“We provide robust safeguards, proactively remove suspected underage users, and have voluntarily launched safety features such as default screen time limits, family linking, and default privacy for minors under 16,” a TikTok spokesperson said in a statement to CBS News. “I have tried to work with the attorneys general for more than two years, and it is incredibly disappointing that they have taken this step instead of working with us on constructive solutions to industry-wide challenges.”

The fourteen attorneys general are suing in hopes of eliminating certain TikTok features, seeking penalties for alleged violations, and seeking restitution for injured families.

Related: Former SF prosecutor Suzy Loftus, now TikTok’s head of security, compares the fight for TikTok to defending SF (SFist)

Image: @AGRobBonta viaTwitter