On Tuesday, Utah became the most recent state to issue a complaint against the video streaming giant Tiktok, accusing the company is luring children into addictive and destructive habits of social media consumption. The lawsuit states that the company tempts children into using the application for hours and hours, which is against their safety and well-being, but the application Does not follow its own safety guidelines and portrays itself from its separate Chinese parent company, Bytedance.
Spencer Cox, Republican governor, said at a news conference informing the lawsuit, that was filed in the state court of the Salt Lake City, “We will not stand by while these companies fail to take adequate, meaningful action to protect our children. We will prevail in holding social media companies accountable by any means necessary.”
The lawsuit also cited public health concerns. So far, research has also claimed that children use social media for over three hours per day are twice at the risk of poor mental health, including clinical diagnosis such as depression and anxiety.
Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes said at the news conference, “Tiktok design and employs algorithm features that spoon feed kids endless, highly curated content from which our children struggle to disengage. Tiktok designed these features to mimic a cruel slot machine that hooks kids’ attention and do not let them go.”
It has not been long when Arkansas and Indiana filed similar complaints. Now it is on the U.S. Supreme Court to decide whether the state attempt to monitor social media applications like X, Tiktok and Facebook would be a breach of the Constitution.
In March this year, the state of Arkansas filed two lawsuits against Tiktok and its Chinese parent company Bytedance and a third against Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram, Threads and WhatsApp— alleging all of them of breaching the state’s deceptive trade practices act, and also of misguiding it’s users about the safety of children on such platforms as well as protection of the personal data of its consumers.
A lawsuit filed in the state court claimed, “Tiktok is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. As long as Tiktok is permitted to deceive and mislead Arkansas consumers about the risks to their data, those consumers and their privacy are an easy prey.”
Republicans— Governor Sara Huckabee Sanders and Attorney General Tim Griffin announced the lawsuit amidst a phase when Tiktok was already surrounded by numerous concerns growing about the safety of its consumers’ personal data. Regulators like FBI and officials at the Federal Communications Commission have already warned that parent company Bytedance could share the users’ personal data retrieved from Tiktok with Xi Jingping’s authoritarian government in China.
Spencer Cox, Republican governor, said at a news conference informing the lawsuit, that was filed in the state court of the Salt Lake City, “We will not stand by while these companies fail to take adequate, meaningful action to protect our children. We will prevail in holding social media companies accountable by any means necessary.”
In May this year, Indiana judge claimed that the usage of free social media app tick-tock does not equate to consume a transaction under state law, giving a blow to the state attorney general’s lawsuit which claimed that the video streaming platform mislead its consumers about the seriousness of inappropriate content and security of information.
A new report claims that a legislation proposed in New York would monitor the way social media platforms like YouTube and Instagram can gather and share children’s personal data. Attorney General Letitia James said, “Young New Yorkers are struggling with record levels of anxiety and depression, and social media companies that use addictive features to keep minors on their platforms longer are largely to blame. This legislation will help tackle the risks of social media affecting our children and protect their privacy.”
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