A plethora of attorneys all across the United States have recently come together to form a formal investigation on the widely used social media networking service, TikTok. Respected lawyers from Kentucky, Florida, California, and many more are currently questioning the negative effects that the application has on its younger audience’s mental health. Even with the services-specific algorithm filtering each individual user’s home page, it is known that the company is not 100% accurate when suggesting related videos.
One of the main leaders of the alliance, Massachusetts AG Maura Healey, publicly stated, “As children and teens already grapple with issues of anxiety, social pressure, and depression, we cannot allow social media to further harm their physical health and mental well-being.” Another member of the group also went on to claim the following statement in regards to their concerts:
“Our children are growing up in the age of social media… Many feel like they need to measure up to the filtered versions of reality that they see on their screens. We know this takes a devastating toll on children’s mental health, but we don’t know what social media companies knew about these harms and when.”
This same partnership is also holding a separate investigation towards Facebook for allegedly encouraging the use of Instagram in the direction of younger users while obtaining the knowledge of the harm it will have on them in the future. An anonymous representative of the popular application took the time to respond to these allegations when they stated, “We care deeply about building an experience that helps to protect and support the well-being of our community, and appreciate that the state attorneys general are focusing on the safety of younger users… We look forward to providing information on the many safety and privacy protections we have for teens.”