States target TikTok

Earlier this month, 14 state attorneys general sued social media platform TikTok for allegedly harming the mental health of young users and collecting information about them through its service in violation of state and federal.

While once this type of action would have been mind-blowing, it has become somewhat routine in recent years as general goodwill towards big tech and social media – once hailed as a final innovation for solving all kinds of problems social – has transformed into distrust. . Similar lawsuits have targeted Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, and Google, parent company of YouTube, among other companies.

This is for good reason; these companies arguably now have more global influence than most countries. They function effectively as public squares and international media platforms, with internal rules and practices that govern how billions of people perceive reality and shape their understanding.

As we have seen in recent years, this immense influence and a general hands-off approach to surveillance do not combine well. The platforms have been exploited to spread and cement everything from foreign state political propaganda to climate change misinformation to vaccine skepticism to pro-anorexia content to explicit non-consensual material, often targeted and involving adolescents.

In practice, it’s virtually impossible to fully moderate the platforms of billions of users in multiple languages ​​in a way that avoids all of this potential harm, but that doesn’t mean these companies haven’t made poor choices that don’t only made things worse.

While many concerns about TikTok have focused on its Chinese ownership, that’s not the issue here, but rather the fact that it’s aggressively targeting minors and gathering tons of data about them. The platform is practically designed to be addictive, with the endless scrolling of autoplaying videos and its penchant for soundtracks and viral trends that ping one another.

A staggering 58% of all teens ages 13 to 17 say they use TikTok daily, and about a fifth say they use the app “almost constantly.” Like it or not, the app has a huge responsibility to them, especially as adolescent mental health is in precipitous decline.

It is worth emphasizing that this does not mean that the entire issue of declining adolescent mental health can be blamed entirely on TikTok or any other social media platform; the problem is too complex and has too many variables. Since the COVID-19 crisis, adolescents have suffered from extreme polarization, fear of climate change, economic uncertainty, and myriad other factors. But social media often tends to amplify these factors, making them inescapable or all-encompassing, a force multiplier of despair just as it can be a positive tool for organizing and building community.

Lawsuits are not always a panacea, and we would not automatically say that every remedy sought by lawmakers, regulators, and attorneys general is ideal. But holding these companies accountable is generally a good thing, just as it has been helpful to shed additional light through diligent reporting, advocacy, whistleblowers, and congressional investigations, among other avenues. There is a happy medium to be achieved, which requires a certain amount of push-pull from companies quite used to doing things their own way.

—The New York Daily News