NJ Co-Leading Investigation Into TikTok's Effect On Teens

TRENTON, NJ — New Jersey will co-lead a multi-state investigation into TikTok's potentially harmful effects on young users, similar to the investigation into Instagram announced last year.

Matthew Platkin, NJ's acting Attorney General, announced the TikTok investigation on Wednesday. Along with him are Attorneys General from California, Florida, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Nebraska, Tennessee, and Vermont.

At the core of both these investigations sits this question: Do social media companies lure young people to use apps that can hurt them mentally or physically?

This latest investigation will center on "techniques employed by TikTok to increase both the frequency and duration of engagement by young users – children, teenagers and young adults – and on the potential harms that may result from such engagement," Platkin said, as well as "what TikTok knows about such harms."

Platkin said the coalition will investigate if the app " is violating state consumer protection laws by inducing young people to use the platform in ways that are potentially damaging and putting them at risk of mental and physical harm."

TikTok, which is owned by Chinese company ByteDance Ltd., makes headlines for reasons both heartwarming and stomach-turning. Just last week, a New Jersey teen told her followers her dad killed a man accused of stalking her family at their new home in Florida.

Ava Majury, who is 15, has more than 1 million followers on TikTok and was making money from her videos. The Majuries gave the New York Times an extensive account of her rise to fame during the lockdown in 2020 — and the troubles she's had with teens who've stalked her and bought photos of her, even from classmates.

Her father, a retired Jersey City police lieutenant who moved his family of five from Manalapan to Florida in 2019, admittedly shot and killed an armed 18-year-old man on his property last July, according to the Times account.

And, schools in New Jersey and across the United States have handled reported threats of violence against their districts made on TikTok. In December, a "challenge" to threaten gun violence at schools nationwide put many on high alert.

Related:

• TikTok Star's Dad, Ex-Jersey City Cop, Killed Stalker: Reports
  
• NJ Co-Leading Investigation In Instagram's Effect On Teens
• TikTok December 17 Challenge Has Police, Schools On High Alert

Of course, TikTok is not the only social medium with a darker side. New Jersey and other states penned a letter to Facebook last year, urging Meta to scrap plans for an under-age-13 version of Instagram.

In that letter, the states highlighted emerging research which suggested a connection between increased time spent online by kids and teens, particularly on social media platforms, and ill effects such as depression, anxiety, isolation, body image issues, cyber-bullying, eating disorders, and sleeplessness, among others.