Texas AG Sues TikTok For Exposing Minors To Explicit Content

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Social media platform TikTok is being sued by the attorney general of Texas for allegedly exposing children to inappropriate material while misleading parents as well as minors about the addictive nature of the app.

“While TikTok has established itself as one of the most popular apps in Texas, it has utterly disregarded the health and safety of Texas minors in the process,” said the Jan. 9 lawsuit filed in the District Court of Galveston County, Texas. “TikTok is rife with profanity, sexual content, violence, mature themes, and drug and alcohol content. In an investigation of TikTok, the State discovered virtually endless amounts of extreme and mature videos presented to minors as young as thirteen—some with millions of views.

“Much of this content would shock the conscience of an individual of any age, let alone impressionable minors.”

The lawsuit accused TikTok of “specifically” targeting its app toward minors, designing it to be “addictive.” The app’s “endless” scroll of videos is aimed at hooking users into “a dreamlike state of content consumption,” and this addictive use is a core element of the company’s business model as it ensures more advertisements and “massive” profits, the lawsuit argues.

TikTok has “affirmatively lied” about the addictive nature of the app, thus misleading parents and minors in Texas, the complaint alleges.

Tiktok targets minors as evidenced by its 12+ age rating in the Apple App Store even though the company could have selected 17+, the complaint said. In Google Play and Microsoft app stores, TikTok claimed the “T for Teen” ratings. When parents or children consider whether to download the app, they are exposed to these ratings that depict TikTok as being suitable for minors.

According to TikTok, the app is available to individuals aged 13 and above. Some of the features on the app “may not be available” to users until they hit 16 or 18 years of age.

For users between the ages of 13 and 15, the account is “set to private by default,” the company states.

“Only people you approve can follow you and view your videos, bio, likes, as well as your following and followers lists. Others can’t Duet, Stitch, download your videos, or add your posts to their Stories,” it says.

The app does not suggest accounts of users under the age of 18 to mutual connections, TikTok states.

The Texas lawsuit alleges that while Tiktok “explicitly claims” that the app only shows content related to sexuality, profanity, drug use, and other adult themes on an “infrequent” or “mild” basis, that is not true.

The state’s investigation has “proven these claims to be misleading, deceptive, and false,” the complaint alleges. Many minors “are now addicted to TikTok, to the detriment of their well-being, development, and mental and physical health,” the lawsuit said.

“TikTok’s effects have been particularly pronounced for young women; the app has caused rampant body image issues, eating disorders, and even suicide. TikTok fails to disclose any of these risks and tries to convince the public that they do not exist, falsely asserting that ‘[m]ental well-being comes first on TikTok,’” it said.

The lawsuit accused TikTok of violating the state’s Deceptive Trade Practices Act and asked the court for a permanent injunction ordering TikTok to cease “false, misleading, and deceptive representations” to minors and parents in the state.

The Epoch Times reached out to TikTok for comment but received no reply by publication time.

TikTok’s Legal Challenges

The U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear arguments on a potential TikTok ban in the United States on Friday.

In April 2024, President Joe Biden signed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which gave TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, until Jan. 19, 2025, to sell the app. Failure to do so would lead to TikTok being banned across web hosting services and mobile app stores in the United States.

TikTok called the law “a massive and unprecedented speech restriction.” In 2023, the app had 170 million monthly users in the United States who collectively uploaded more than 5.5 billion videos, viewed more than 13 trillion times, it said.

In a brief submitted to the Supreme Court, U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar said the law was constitutional as it was “entirely consistent with the First Amendment.”

TikTok said in a Dec. 19, 2024, statement that it expects the Supreme Court to “find the TikTok ban unconstitutional so the over 170 million Americans on our platform can continue to exercise their free speech right.”

Meanwhile, President-elect Donald Trump filed a brief in the case, asking justices to halt the law, arguing that the Biden administration could be aiming to silence a “platform favored by tens of millions of Americans, based in large part on concerns about disfavored content on that platform.”

Pausing the law would give the president-elect time to negotiate a solution on the matter when he assumes office this month, the brief argued.

In August 2024, the Biden administration sued TikTok, citing the company’s alleged data privacy failures regarding children on the platform.

A TikTok spokesperson disagreed with the allegations in an emailed statement to The Epoch Times at the time, saying the accusations related to “past events and practices that are factually inaccurate or have been addressed.”

“We offer age-appropriate experiences with stringent safeguards, proactively remove suspected underage users, and have voluntarily launched features such as default screentime limits, Family Pairing, and additional privacy protections for minors,” the spokesperson said.

Sam Dorman contributed to the report.