This story was originally produced by the Concord Monitor. NHPR is republishing it in partnership with the Granite State News Collaborative.
New Hampshire has filed a lawsuit against TikTok alleging that the social media site used addictive features “to exploit young users’ naivete and ongoing brain development” and “knowingly deceived New Hampshire families with false assurances of safety.”
The suit is similar to one that the state filed in October against Meta Platforms Inc., which owns Facebook.
It is also similar to suits filed against TikTok by several other states, part of a probe by many state attorneys general that was announced in early 2022 and has been progressing since then. Unlike a TikTok investigation by the Federal Trade Commission that focuses on federal children’s privacy laws, the states’ probe is mostly focused on whether TikTok violated state consumer protection laws that prohibit business conduct deemed by a court to be deceptive.
Attorney General John M. Formella announced the lawsuit Tuesday.
It was filed in Merrimack County Superior Court.
“This action underscores our commitment to holding social media platforms accountable for their harmful actions to youth. … This lawsuit is just the latest step in our ongoing efforts to ensure that platforms like TikTok operate responsibly and transparently in our state,” Formella said in a prepared statement.
The suit alleges that TikTok creates “a manipulative and addictive product that ensnares young users into endlessly scrolling its platform which it knows is harmful to children’s mental health and well-being,” misled consumers “about the safety of the platform with false assurances about the effectiveness of enforcement of community guidelines, and content moderation,” and collected personal data from children under the age of 13 without disclosures or parental consent.
The suit also says Tiktok downplayed the control exercised by its China-based parent ByteDance Ltd. “to avoid regulatory scrutiny and customer concerns about the safety of their data.”
The complaint asks the court to enter an injunction requiring substantive changes in how the company operates, and seeks unspecified penalties and other monetary relief.
The Attorney General’s investigation of other social media platforms for related practices continues.
