New Hampshire Sues TikTok Alleging Consumer Protection Violations, Harm to Kids

New Hampshire is suing social media video service TikTok Inc. for allegedly violating the state’s consumer protection act, Attorney General John M. Formella announced.

The state’s complaint against TikTok filed in Superior Court in Merrimack alleges that the company has engaged in unfair and deceptive acts or practices in violation of New Hampshire law by designing an unfair product and misleading the state’s consumers about its safety.

It also accuses TikTok of violating children’s privacy by collecting and using their personal data.

According to the suit, TikTok’s platform includes “addictive features to exploit young users’ naivete and ongoing brain development and maximize the time young users spend on the platform in the interest of profit” and “make it hard for children to disengage from the platform and lead to a cycle of excessive use.”

The 124-page, heavily redacted complaint alleges that the company knows this cycle of use results in “profound harm to its young users, including depression, anxiety, and isolation from friends and family.”

The complaint further alleges that as the company deployed these features, it also lied to parents about the safety of the platform, downplayed the risks posed, while touting supposed safety measures that the company knows are ineffective.

Meta Lawsuit

The lawsuit is not the first attempt by New Hampshire to hold social media platforms accountable. In October 2023, Formella filed a complaint against Meta Platforms, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, alleging similar manipulative design features and deceptive business practices.

The New Hampshire lawsuit attempts to tie the popularity of TikTok to mental health issues facing New Hampshire teens. It claims that since the video app launched in 2017, TikTok has grown into a “constant presence in teenagers’ lives, and at the same time, the rates of mental health problems among New Hampshire high school students have skyrocketed.”

The suit cites statistics from the state’s department of education that in 2021, almost half (44.2%) of New Hampshire’s high school students reported symptoms of clinical depression, feeling persistently sad or hopeless—a 57.8% increase from 2017.1

Also between 2017 and 2021, the percentage of New Hampshire high school students who reported seriously considering suicide jumped from 16.1% to 24.7%.2, while the percentage of high school students who reported actually attempting suicide went from 5.9% to 9.8%.

The AG’s suit contends that younger people are an “easy target for TikTok’s addictive design” because their brains are still in development.

“TikTok’s addictive design features deliberately alter the physical brain chemistry of the New Hampshire children who use TikTok. In other words, TikTok has intentionally changed the chemicals inside the brains of tens of thousands of children in New Hampshire,” the suit alleges.

While TikTok says it is important to protect children, the lawsuit claims its leaders know that its policies to do so are not effective and that some of its content to young users has been shown to encourage dangerous and violent behaviors.

Consumer Injury

According to the complaint New Hampshire consumers have suffered injury because TikTok’s conduct “unreasonably creates obstacles to the free exercise of consumer decision-making and induces users to spend significant time on the app, including time the users themselves report they do not want to spend on the app.”

The state is asking the court for an order permanently enjoining TikTok from engaging in unfair acts and practices, restitution to consumers, civil penalties in the amount of $10,000 for each violation of the state’s consumer protection act, and an award covering all legal costs and expenses.

The action is being brought exclusively under the law of the New Hampshire; no federal claims are being asserted.

Topics Lawsuits New Hampshire