Hawaii sues TikTok, says platform deliberately harms children

HONOLULU (CN) — The state of Hawaii filed a lawsuit Wednesday accusing TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance, of intentionally designing the platform to addict children, surveil them and expose them to dangerous content while misleading families about the risks.

Attorney General Anne Lopez, through local attorney Douglas Chin, filed the complaint in Oahu First Circuit Court. The state accuses TikTok of deliberately using “coercive design tactics” that exploit children’s developing brains to make the platform as addictive as possible, even as the company publicly claimed that safety was its top priority.

“TikTok’s business model is predicated upon compelling its users to spend as much as possible on its platform,” the state said in its lawsuit, citing internal company documents that acknowledge the “advertising-based business model encourages optimization for time spent in the app.”

Hawaii joins a growing list of states taking legal action against TikTok. But the state’s 105-page complaint goes further than many others, presenting internal company documents that suggest TikTok executives were aware of the harm while prioritizing profits.

According to the state, TikTok research found that “compulsive usage correlates with a slew of negative mental health effects like loss of analytical skills, memory formation, contextual thinking, conversational depth, empathy and increased anxiety."

That research also noted that “compulsive usage interferes with essential personal responsibilities like sufficient sleep, work/school responsibilities and connecting with loved ones.”

Hawaii’s complaint arrives as the state grapples with its own youth mental health crisis. According to the 2023 Hawaii Youth Risk Behavior Survey, about 34% of public middle school students have felt sad or hopeless for two weeks or more, and 26% have seriously thought about suicide.

The state notes that from 2018 to 2022, 51 youth between ages 10 and 19 died by suicide in Hawaii, making it the leading cause of death in that age group.

Hawaii claims TikTok deliberately targeted children from its inception, building on the Musical.ly platform that focused on and popular with teens and tweens. Internal documents cited by the plaintiff reveal that TikTok considered users under 13 to be “a critical demographic,” believing young users would continue using the platform even after they grew up.

They also claim the company was aware that its platform operated “in part like a virtual strip club,” where viewers could send virtual gifts worth real money to young streamers, often in exchange for sexually suggestive behavior.

A 2022 Forbes article described TikTok LIVE as “a strip club filled with 15-year-olds,” the state notes in its complaint. Internal TikTok documents acknowledged that the feature enabled “exploitation of live hosts” and put users at risk of grooming, but the company delayed implementing safety measures because LIVE was “such a huge part of the strategy” and too profitable to restrict, according to the complaint.

Hawaii also takes aim at TikTok’s safety features, claiming they are largely ineffective and misleadingly marketed. The platform’s 60-minute daily time limit for teens, for example, can be easily bypassed, extended or disabled entirely. An internal study found it reduced average daily use by only minutes. TikTok promoted it as a meaningful safeguard.

“Our goal is not to reduce the time spent,” a TikTok product manager wrote in an internal document about the company’s screen time management tools.

Hawaii is seeking fines ranging from $500 to $10,000 for each violation of the state’s Unfair or Deceptive Acts or Practices Law. Under this law, each day a violation occurs is counted separately. Considering TikTok’s years of operations in Hawaii and the potentially thousands of daily violations, the total penalties could reach hundreds of millions of dollars.

The state is also requesting a permanent injunction to prevent TikTok from continuing its “deceptive and harmful” practices. In addition, Hawaii demands that TikTok, along with its agents and employees, be permanently barred from engaging in what the state claims are unfair or deceptive practices in the marketing, promotion, sale, or distribution of the platform within the state.

Honolulu-based Starn O’Toole Marcus & Fisher and Seattle-based Keller Rohrback LLP have been appointed as special deputy attorneys general in the case. Chin, who filed the lawsuit, served as Hawaii Attorney General from 2015-2018.

Lopez, Chin and representatives for TikTok did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

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