Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul on Tuesday filed one of more than a dozen state-level lawsuits nationwide against TikTok, arguing that the endless-scrolling vertical video app is taking advantage of children and harming their mental health.
In joining states from across the nation and Washington, D.C., Illinois’ TikTok lawsuit is the latest step that the state has taken to rein in tech companies not based in the Midwest and regulate technology that has an impact across the globe. The lawsuit comes on the heels of Illinois legislation cracking down the use of deepfakes and enacting strict regulations on biometric technology and child influencers.
Illinois aims to hold the social media company “accountable for unfairly and deceptively designing, operating and marketing the TikTok Platform to ensnare and addict young users in Illinois,” the lawsuit stated.
TikTok’s strategies to pull in young people lead to “excessive, compulsive, and addictive” usage and sleep issues, and it can exacerbate depression, anxiety and other mental health problems, according to the lawsuit. In turn, it falsely markets itself as safe for young people, while “compulsive use is woven into the very fabric of the app,” the lawsuit states.
TikTok — which, according to the lawsuit, has both a 30,000-square-foot Fulton Market space and a data center in the Chicago area — disputed the attorney general’s claims Tuesday.
“We’re proud of and remain deeply committed to the work we’ve done to protect teens and we will continue to update and improve our product,” company spokesperson Michael Hughes said in a written statement.
The app has “voluntarily launched” features, including default privacy settings for children, Hughes said, and “default screen time limits” for young users, the company said in a statement to the Tribune. These screen time limits can be bypassed, however, with a self-set passcode for teenage users or a passcode that parents set for younger kids.
Raoul’s lawsuit states the company’s characterization of its safety tools is “misleading” and that TikTok is manipulating young people’s vulnerability to unpredictable dopamine “rewards,” leading to compulsive use of the app. The suit also takes issue with TikTok’s beauty filters, arguing they can cause body dysmorphia in young users.
According to a Pew Research survey last year, most U.S. teens use TikTok daily and 17% said they’re on the platform “almost constantly.”
In Illinois, 6.2 million residents — nearly half the state’s population — “actively use” TikTok, according to the lawsuit.
Children can experience a number of challenges from excessive social media use, including depression, anxiety, sleep deprivation, social isolation and body dysmorphia, said Dr. Khalid Afzal, an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral neuroscience at the University of Chicago. Constantly comparing what others eat or how much they exercise, for example, can lead to poor self-esteem and disordered eating, Afzal said.
The TikTok algorithm in particular is “impressively smart” because the feed is customized to a user’s interests, Afzal said, which also makes it addictive. He said it’s also known to lead to “time distortion” — essentially when 15 minutes scrolling on the app easily becomes three hours.
“When we go into that reward cycle, we just start to seek more and more and more, and before we know it so much time is spent. The more time spent, the more it’s ingrained,” Afzal said. “(For children), developmentally, these are very vulnerable times. We don’t know yet, but these could have long-term psychological effects.”
Afzal commended the attorney general’s lawsuit, saying he agrees social media companies are “exploiting young minds” to boost revenue. He noted, however, that an increase in youth depression isn’t only because of social media. He pointed to increased environmental stress, specifically gun violence, in Chicago.
Tuesday’s suit stems from an multi-state investigation, announced in 2022, into whether TikTok violated consumer protection laws. The Illinois attorney general’s lawsuit wants monetary penalties imposed on TikTok and an injunction on the practices it highlights as objectionable.
It’s neither the first lawsuit filed in the U.S. against TikTok nor Raoul’s first suit against a social media company.
In total, 23 attorneys general in the U.S. have filed actions against TikTok related to its conduct with children, according to Raoul’s office. That includes the 13 states and the District of Columbia that filed lawsuits Tuesday.
“We’ve endeavored to work with the attorneys general for over two years,” said Hughes, the TikTok spokesperson, “and it is incredibly disappointing they have taken this step rather than work with us on constructive solutions to industrywide challenges.”
Last year, dozens of attorneys general, including Raoul, sued Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram. The lawsuits alleged that features on both those apps were harmful and addictive to children.
In addition to Raoul’s moves, the Illinois General Assembly has taken on artificial intelligence and tech companies. The efforts have made Illinois a leader on some tech safety and child protection issues, even at times bypassing California where many social media and entertainment companies are based.
Illinois last year became the first to pass a law intended to ensure child social media influencers eventually receive a payout for their work, modeled after similar laws for other child entertainers.
In the AI space, a new law passed earlier this year protects artists and others from unauthorized digital replicas, with some exceptions for creative use. And last year, Gov. JB Pritzker signed a law allowing victims of deepfake porn to sue. Lawmakers, pushed by Raoul, also recently passed a measure to criminalize AI-generated child porn.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois during this year’s legislative session raised some concerns about the latter bill and, citing free speech issues, took issue with another of Illinois lawmakers’ attempts to make online activity safer: a law signed in 2023 to make anyone who engages in doxxing to be found civilly liable in court.
The state decided to pull back the potential for runaway damages in its strictest-in-the-country biometric privacy law this year, following a state Supreme Court suggestion the legislature revisit how fines are calculated.
To Dr. John Walkup, many problems children experience on social media are because they consume an “overwhelming volume,” or what he calls a “dose issue.” It’s not that social media is inherently negative, he said, but that it needs to be used in moderation, especially for kids who are more vulnerable.
“There’s two groups of kids I worry about a lot and that is the kids who have a problem and can learn more about how to build their problem and make their problem worse,” said Walkup, chair of the psychiatry and behavioral health department at Lurie Children’s Hospital. “And then those kids who are particularly alienated, disaffected and angry, and how they find solace and support and meaning and belonging on some websites that actually promote violence.”
He tells families social media should be “punctuation for productive activity,” which shouldn’t amount to more than an hour to an hour-and-a-half per day.
“If you’re up, dressed, in the kitchen early, eat breakfast … and you’re kind of ready five minutes before you have to go out the door to get to school, I don’t mind if kids spend five minutes doing social media,” he said. “They’ve kind of earned it.”