For Immediate Release:
Wednesday, March 2, 2022
Contact:
Nazneen Ahmed (919) 716-0060
(RALEIGH) Attorney General Josh Stein today announced that he is investigating TikTok for providing and promoting its social media platform to children and young adults. TikTok use has been associated with physical and mental health harms. Attorney General Stein and a bipartisan group of attorneys general are examining whether the company violated state consumer protection laws by putting young people at risk.
“I’m very concerned about the ways in which social media companies may be using their technology to hook our kids without regard for their emotional or mental health,” said Attorney General Josh Stein. “This investigation will shed more light on TikTok’s business practices and how they may harm our children. I will do everything in my power to keep North Carolina’s children safe, whether they’re at school, on the playground, or online.”
The investigation will look into the harms such usage causes to young users and what TikTok knows about those harms. The investigation focuses, among other things, on the techniques TikTok uses to boost young user engagement, including the amount of time and frequency spent on the platform.
Attorney General Stein has long been concerned about the negative impacts of social media platforms on North Carolina’s children. He is part of an executive committee of states investigating Meta, formerly known as Facebook, for providing and promoting Instagram to kids. In May, he was part of a bipartisan coalition of 44 attorneys general that urged Facebook to abandon its plans to launch a version of Instagram for children under the age of 13.
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