“TikTok knowingly designed its app to keep young teens engaged for as long as possible while failing to put appropriate safeguards in place for underage users,” Attorney General JB McCuskey said.
That stark assessment sits at the core of a new legal battle filed Thursday in Kanawha County Circuit Court. Attorney General JB McCuskey filed a lawsuit against social media company TikTok, accusing the platform of violating West Virginia consumer protection laws and exposing children to severe mental health and safety risks.
The legal filing marks the latest legal action taken by McCuskey targeting tech platforms over youth safety.
Algorithm Testing Reveals Striking Disparities
To understand the mechanics behind the state’s claims, investigators within the Consumer Protection Division of the Attorney General’s Office ran a side-by-side test using two distinct profiles: one registered to an adult and another to a 13-year-old girl.
Today, Attorney General JB McCuskey filed a lawsuit against TikTok, alleging the company violated numerous West Virginia consumer protection laws through the design and operation of its app, ultimately harming kids. pic.twitter.com/jcTrte7gnA
The results exposed a stark divide. While the adult account mostly received content focused on ordinary interests like home improvement and local restaurants, the child account repeatedly received sexually suggestive content. McCuskey pointed directly to this design discrepancy, noting that West Virginia parents shouldn’t have to compete against an algorithm engineered to keep kids scrolling while targeting them with sexualized content.
Beyond content filtering failures, the lawsuit details how the platform’s features make young users discoverable and reachable to potential predators. Information publicly available through a user’s social media presence can equip a predator to impersonate a peer or peer’s friend, manufacture familiarity, and gain the child’s trust before a parent is even aware that contact has occurred.
Study Links Frequent TikTok Use to Depressive Symptoms in Youth
The state’s legal arguments draw heavily on localized data regarding youth mental health. A study involving West Virginia University researchers examined the mental health risks TikTok poses to West Virginia children, finding that more frequent TikTok use was associated with more depressive symptoms.
The researchers noted that teens felt worse about themselves when comparing their own lives to the idealized versions of their friends’ lives portrayed on social media. That dynamic carries heightened consequences in a state which had the nation’s highest estimated rate of children affected by opioid use in 2017—a vulnerability linked by national research to persistent sadness, hopelessness, and suicide risk among teenagers.
Parents have a responsibility to monitor what their kids are doing online, absolutely. But they are cut off at the knees when companies like TikTok do nothing to close safety loopholes and conceal risks of their platform from parents.
Mental health resources remain available online for parents, caregivers, and schools dealing with these digital pressures.
A Broader Legal Strategy Across Big Tech
Thursday’s filing against TikTok is the latest legal action taken by McCuskey to hold tech companies accountable for youth safety. It represents the continuation of legal action aimed at altering how technology companies treat underage users.
Earlier this month, the Attorney General’s Office sued OpenAI for its dangerous design. Those actions follow similar settlements secured over the past year. In August, West Virginia was one of several states involved in a settlement with Meta, prompting safety changes for teen accounts on Instagram and Facebook. West Virginia also reached a settlement with Roblox earlier this year that involved safety changes to that platform as well as funding for safety education specifically for West Virginia parents, teachers and children.
The current lawsuit against TikTok seeks a broad array of remedies, including restitution, the disgorgement of ill-gotten gains, civil penalties, attorneys’ fees and costs, and injunctive relief requiring TikTok to implement effective child predator detection measures and protections, and other equitable remedies mandating safer product design going forward.
