‘Digital nicotine’: AG Ellison sues TikTok for exploiting young people’s vulnerabilities

ST. PAUL — Attorney General Keith Ellison sued TikTok on Tuesday, Aug. 19, for violating Minnesota consumer protection laws, alleging the social media giant illegally preys on young users’ developmental vulnerabilities with addictive algorithms.

“TikTok has created a dangerously addictive platform that exploits the unfinished reward system in our children’s brains,” Ellison said at a press conference Tuesday.

The lawsuit alleges TikTok ensnares young users with multiple parts of its design.

The suit says TikTok feeds young users personalized recommendations to keep them on-site and scrolling through what’s called “infinite scroll,” a never-ending stream of content that its own inventor described as addictive.

TikTok offers hundreds of “beauty filters,” which turn on for young users by default, despite the company acknowledging in an internal report that teens are “more susceptible” to the negative effects of beauty filters while they are “at a critical period for developing body dysmorphia [and] eating disorders,” according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit also highlights the livestreaming feature called “LIVE” introduced by TikTok in 2019, which allows users to pay creators through an unregulated marketplace that the lawsuit charges can be used for sexual exploitation.

“Operating in part like a virtual strip club, LIVE allows young streamers to turn their homes into a performance stage, and allows other users to entice streamers into sexual acts in exchange for virtual money,” the lawsuit alleges.

These features — combined with TikTok’s misrepresentations of its own dangers — amount to “deceptive and unfair” practices constituting multiple violations of consumer protection law, according to the suit.

“It’s an unfair thing to expect that a kid can overcome the pressures and the design features and the research and the brain science of some of the most highly trained people in the world,” Ellison said.

The suit makes a pointed comparison between TikTok and tobacco, referring to it as “digital nicotine.”

Minnesota and a bevy of other states that have brought suits against social media companies are using a similar playbook that led to billions in damages levied against Big Tobacco in the 1990s and helped drive down American nicotine use until vapes and pouches brought about a revival.

The lawsuit seeks $25,000 per violation, which could rise to stratospheric levels given the app’s popularity among teens, though Ellison’s office said they could not provide an estimate of how much TikTok could be forced to pay if they’re victorious after what’s expected to be a yearslong legal battle.

Ellison’s office previously announced in 2022 that Ellison would join a nationwide coalition of state attorneys general to investigate TikTok’s possible consumer law violations. Thirteen states — comprising a mix of Democratic and Republican attorneys general — from that coalition filed suits last October against TikTok, with Minnesota joining them just now.

The lawsuit also follows the attorney general’s suit against Meta in October 2023, which was similarly part of a coalition of states accusing the social media behemoth of deliberately targeting children in its addictive design. Nearly two years out, that case is still in the “mushy middle” of a discovery phase, said Assistant Attorney General Bennett Hartz.

In a statement, a TikTok spokesperson said that the lawsuit is “based on misleading and inaccurate claims that fail to recognize the robust safety measures TikTok has voluntarily implemented.”

The spokesperson noted that the platform has many safety features built into teen accounts, along with parental controls for screen time, content and privacy.

TikTok is fighting for survival in the U.S. on multiple fronts. The U.S. Congress and then-President Joe Biden signed a law requiring Chinese parent company ByteDance to divest TikTok, fearing Chinese propaganda and surveillance. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the law in January.

The divest-or-ban law has not been enforced in practice, though, and President Donald Trump has since punted enforcement three times, with a new deadline of September 17.

At the press conference, Ellison declined to offer an opinion on TikTok’s ownership.

“This lawsuit is designed to make them obey the law, whether they’re owned by somebody in the U.S. or China,” Ellison said.

Minnesota Reformer is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Minnesota Reformer maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor J. Patrick Coolican for questions: info@minnesotareformer.com.