Overview
- Pennsylvania Attorney General Dave Sunday filed the suit in Allegheny County, which Tuesday accuses TikTok and ByteDance of violating state consumer-protection law by marketing the app as suitable for users 13 and older.
- The complaint says TikTok misleads parents about age-appropriateness and exposes 13- to 15-year-olds to frequent profanity, drug and alcohol content, and sexually suggestive material.
- Pennsylvania alleges platform features such as infinite scroll and autoplay are intentionally engineered to increase time on the app and harm children’s mental well-being and development.
- TikTok denied the allegations, saying the complaint ignores built-in teen safeguards including preset privacy settings and Family Pairing parental controls, while the attorney general says those tools are easy to bypass.
- At the same time New Jersey passed three laws and funded a $500,000 Social Media Research Center to study youth harms and require child-centered design, signaling a combined legal, legislative and research strategy by states.