It’s an expansion of an Instagram probe that began in November.
TikTok is being investigated by a coalition of state attorneys general. They’re looking for information to discover if and how the service raises the danger of youngsters being harmed online. It’s a follow-up to an investigation the AGs launched into Instagram in November, which looked at the app’s impact on teenagers. Prosecutors are investigating if TikTok and Instagram endangered the public and whether they violated state consumer protection rules.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the investigation is being led by a bipartisan group of eight attorneys general from California, Florida, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New Jersey, Tennessee, and Vermont. They have been joined by AGs from a number of other states.
“Today, attorneys general across the nation joined an investigation into TikTok for providing and promoting its social media platform to children and young adults while use is associated with physical and mental health harms,” the AGs said in a statement. “The investigation will look into the harms such usage causes to young users and what TikTok knew about those harms.”
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Among other things, the coalition will look into the ways TikTok tries to boost engagement among young users, including the “frequency of engagement” with the platform and how long kids spend using it.
“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,” a TikTok spokesperson told Engadget. “We look forward to providing information on the many safety and privacy protections we have for teens.”
The spokesperson noted that TikTok limits some features by age, offers parents tools and resources and builds the wellbeing of younger users into its policies. The Federal Trade Commission fined TikTok $5.7 million in 2019 over reported violations of child privacy rules.
The Instagram probe followed the publication of an investigation by The Journal based on leaked internal research from Instagram parent Meta. According to the report, the data suggested using Instagram was linked to an increased risk of mental and physical health harms to teens.
The prosecutors are investigating Meta “for providing and promoting the social media platform Instagram to children and young adults despite knowing that such use is associated with physical and mental health harms.” Meta said at the time that the accusations were “false” and that AGs showed “a deep misunderstanding of the facts.” Around that time, the company halted work on a version of Instagram for kids.
At the State of the Union address on Tuesday, President Joe Biden urged Congress to “ban targeted advertising to children” and called on tech companies to “stop collecting personal data on our children.” Last month, two bipartisan Senators introduced a bill that seeks to instruct the Federal Trade Commission to look into ways of reducing “the harm of algorithmic amplification and social media addiction.”
