Parents are indeed suing TikTok over alleged failures to protect children’s safety, focusing primarily on the app’s addictive design and harmful impact on young users’ mental health. These lawsuits claim that TikTok, operated by ByteDance, intentionally engineered its platform to be addictive, exploiting children’s developing brains and exposing them to damaging content without adequate safeguards or warnings.
The wave of legal actions began gaining momentum in late 2024 and has expanded significantly through 2025. Multiple states, families, and school districts have filed lawsuits accusing TikTok of deceptive practices, including designing algorithms that maximize screen time by exploiting reward systems in young users’ brains. These algorithms create a feedback loop that makes it difficult for children and teens to disengage, leading to compulsive use and mental health issues such as anxiety, depression, self-harm, and eating disorders.
One prominent example is the lawsuit filed by the Minnesota Attorney General, which argues that TikTok’s addictive algorithms prioritize profit over the well-being of children. This lawsuit seeks a court order to stop these harmful practices and demands financial compensation for affected children. It highlights how TikTok’s design pits children’s willpower against sophisticated product engineering, an unfair battle given their still-developing impulse control.
In addition to addiction claims, TikTok faces allegations of illegally collecting data from children under 13 without parental consent, violating privacy laws designed to protect minors online. This has led to federal scrutiny and lawsuits from the U.S. Justice Department, further intensifying pressure on the company.
Families involved in these lawsuits often describe severe emotional and psychological harm experienced by their children, linking these issues directly to TikTok’s manipulative features. These features include endless scrolling, personalized content feeds, and in-app purchases pushed through TikTok Shop, all designed to keep users engaged longer and encourage spending.
The legal actions are being consolidated into multidistrict litigation (MDL), allowing plaintiffs to pool resources and evidence to strengthen their cases. This process also streamlines the handling of thousands of claims nationwide, reflecting a broad societal concern about social media’s impact on youth.
TikTok has responded by emphasizing its existing safety tools, such as Family Pairing, which allows parents to monitor and control their children’s app usage. The company claims to have implemented over 50 features aimed at protecting users’ well-being. However, critics argue that these controls are complicated to set up, require cooperation from the child, and do not adequately address the core issues of addictive design and harmful content exposure.
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