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14 States have filed a lawsuit against TikTok, accusing the platform of addicting young users and harming their mental health.

What’s the deal: The lawsuit, led by New York Attorney General Letitia James and California Attorney General Rob Bonta, claims that TikTok exploits young users by intentionally designing its platform to be addictive, causing harm to their mental health. The states argue that TikTok’s features, such as infinite scrolling, autoplay, and push notifications, are engineered to maximize the time minors spend on the platform, boosting the company’s ad revenue at the expense of users’ well-being.

Other allegations: The lawsuit also claims that TikTok challenges, which are created by users of the platform to “challenge” others to replicate often risky or dangerous behaviors, pose a significant threat to the safety of young users. One notable example cited in the lawsuit is the death of a teenager in Brooklyn who died while “subway surfing,” a stunt linked to a TikTok challenge. Despite TikTok’s efforts to remove content promoting such behaviors, the lawsuit argues that these challenges continue to spread on the platform, contributing to both physical dangers and negative mental health impacts on vulnerable users.

Statement from Attorney Generals: In a memo, the attorney generals of all 14 states said, “TikTok’s underlying business model focuses on maximizing young users’ time on the platform so the company can boost revenue from selling targeted ads. TikTok uses an addictive, content-recommendation system designed to keep minors on the platform as long as possible and as often as possible, despite the dangers of compulsive use.”

TikTok responds: In a brief statement, TikTok said, “We strongly disagree with these claims, many of which we believe to be inaccurate and misleading. We’re proud of and remain deeply committed to the work we’ve done to protect teens and we will continue to update and improve our product. We provide robust safeguards, proactively remove suspected underage users, and have voluntarily launched safety features.”

List of states suing TikTok: New York, California, New Jersey, North Carolina, Kentucky, Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Oregon, South Carolina, Washington, Colorado, and the District of Columbia.