On Thursday (October 24), Austin Knudsen, the Attorney General of Montana in the United States, filed a lawsuit against TikTok, accusing the social media platform of intentionally sharing addictive and harmful content with children and teenagers, which poses a risk to their mental health.
Knudsen’s office stated in a press release that after conducting an investigation, the Montana Department of Justice found that TikTok “persistently exposes children as young as 13 to extreme and mature videos.”
According to The Hill’s report on Thursday, Knudsen’s office pointed out that “the lawsuit alleges that TikTok, when designing the platform, targeted young users to engage them addictively and then distorted the content displayed on the application, violating the Montana Consumer Protection Act.”
In his statement on Thursday, Knudsen said, “TikTok must be held accountable for poisoning the minds of children and for lying to parents about the videos children can watch on the app. Parents need to know the truth about the content their children are exposed to on the app.”
The lawsuit specifically questions TikTok’s age ratings on various app stores, alleging that TikTok deceives the public in terms of the frequency of videos containing profanity, crude humor, mature themes, sexual content, nudity, alcohol, or drug-related content.
Although these videos are described as “not frequent and mild” in nature, the lawsuit highlights that many videos with “billions of views” contain such content.
The lawsuit also mentions that TikTok’s “effects” may alter users’ appearances, leading to body image issues, eating disorders, and other mental health problems.
Furthermore, the lawsuit accuses TikTok of misleading the public on restrictive controls by claiming that its restrictive mode only limits the frequency of certain content appearances.
Knudsen’s office stated, “Even with the enabling of restrictive mode, it does not operate as TikTok claims.”
A TikTok spokesperson responded by strongly opposing the statements in the lawsuit, stating that most of the allegations are “inaccurate and misleading.”
Just over the past two weeks, several other states have also filed lawsuits against TikTok for similar reasons.