A nationwide investigation will explore the risks posed to children by the popular TikTok short video app, California Atty. General Rob Ponta announced Wednesday.
Among the issues the investigation will focus on are how the company has sought to increase the duration and frequency of youth use of its application, how aware the company is of any harm these users might cause and whether this is possible. Violation of consumer protection laws.
Punta Fei said statement. We know this is taking a devastating toll on children’s mental health and well-being. But we don’t know what social media companies knew about these damages and when. “
“Our nationwide investigation will allow us to get much-needed answers and determine whether TikTok is violating the law in promoting its platform to Californian youth,” he said.
Ponta’s office said the investigation is being led by prosecutors from eight states: California, Florida, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New Jersey, Tennessee and Vermont. Unspecified attorney generals from other countries will also participate in this process.
TikTok offers a mix of video entertainment and social media that has been a huge hit among many Americans, especially young adults, during the COVID-19 pandemic. in 2020 had become The most downloaded app in the world by some measures.
In response to the investigation, a TikTok spokesperson told The Times that the company takes a strong interest in “building an experience that helps protect and support the well-being of our community,” adding that the company limits some features of the platform by age and is investing in ways for users to “enjoy content based on age appropriate or family convenience.” .”
TikTok estimates that “state attorneys general are focusing on the safety of younger users,” the spokesperson wrote via email. “We look forward to providing information about many of the security and privacy protections we provide to teens.”
Not long ago, the future of the app in the US seemed uncertain. In August 2020, then President Trump issued an executive order It aims to block the app – which is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance – in the US, due to national security concerns. ByteDance has been in talks with Microsoft and other US companies with the goal of avoiding shutdown by handing over ownership or control of user data.
Although some security questions remain, threats of outright ban have persisted since then evaporated.
In November, Punta Help get off A similar investigation into how Instagram, another social network, is trying to boost engagement among young users, and the mental health impact of these users. (Ponta has not released a news release informing the public of the status of this investigation since it first announced it.)
The opening of this investigation came after Meta – the company that owns Instagram – Paused plans to develop a separate app focused on children after information revealed by whistleblower Frances Hogan suggested that Instagram could harm the mental health of young users, especially teenage girls.
Reports in the Wall Street Journal revealed that Meta was aware of these concerns but constantly downplayed them.
Bonta’s new investigation into TikTok will be a bipartisan undertaking, led by the Republican attorney generals of Florida, Kentucky, Nebraska and Tennessee in partnership with their Democratic counterparts from California, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Vermont. Technology regulation is one of the few areas in contemporary politics around which bipartisan consensus remains common, although the two parties differ in their focus, with liberals focusing on disinformation and monopolistic power and conservatives sounding the alarm about censorship and bias.
Concerns around children’s safety have proven to be particularly unifying. Heated debates about the extent to which social media platforms should regulate the content of their users almost uniformly draw the line in child sexual abuse material. Age limits, although not consistently enforced, are also common on the Internet.
Even President Biden’s State of the Union address, which he gave the night before the Ponta Declaration, touched the problem.
“As Frances Hogan, who is here tonight with us, has made clear, we must hold social media platforms accountable for the national experiment they are conducting on our children for profit,” Biden said. It’s time to strengthen privacy protection, and block ads directed to children [and] Asking tech companies to stop collecting personal data about our children.”