TikTok Probed by State Attorneys General Over App’s Impact on Children

A group of state attorneys general has initiated an investigation into TikTok and whether children and teens face any online harms related to the popular social media app, according to a press release from the Massachusetts state attorney general’s office.

Announced Wednesday (March 2), the move is an offshoot of a previous investigation from the same attorneys general, who had been looking into Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, over the same concerns.

According to the release, the main concerns are related to how the app is impacting the mental and physical health of the children using it and whether TikTok violated state consumer protection laws.

“The investigation will look into the harms such usage causes to young users and what TikTok knew about those harms,” the group said in the release. “The investigation focuses, among other things, on the techniques utilized by TikTok to boost young user engagement, including increasing the duration of time spent on the platform and frequency of engagement with the platform.”

The Instagram probe comes from November last year and was focusing on how Meta increased the frequency and duration of young users’ engagement, and the harms that can happen because of that.

There were reports that Meta’s internal research had found that using Instagram had been associated with higher risks of physical and mental health concerns, such as disordered eating or depression. The investigation will look into whether the companies violated laws and put the public “at risk.”

The investigation comes from a bipartisan group of attorneys general from California, Florida, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New Jersey, Tennessee and Vermont, and they’re now being joined by more attorneys general from elsewhere in the country.

PYMNTS wrote last year that the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division were looking into merger rules from Big Tech companies.

See also: FTC, DOJ Launch Consultation To Tighten Grip on Big Tech M&A 

“Illegal mergers can inflict a host of harms, from higher prices and lower wages to diminished opportunity, reduced innovation, and less resiliency,” FTC Chair Lina M. Khan said at the time. “This inquiry launched by the FTC and DOJ is designed to ensure that our merger guidelines accurately reflect modern market realities and equip us to forcefully enforce the law against unlawful deals.”