DENVER — Colorado's attorney general, along with leaders from other states, are in the middle of a legal battle with TikTok over allegations the app is harming children's mental health. That legal battle just hit another hurdle.
Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser told Denver7 the state is three years into an investigation over the impacts the social media platform has on kids' mental health. Now, he said, they are having to ask the courts to try and get TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, to cooperate. While they wait for a response, Weiser said kids' mental health hangs in the balance.
The list of how TikTok and social media is infiltrating youth lives keeps growing, impacting their sleep, their mood, and their performance in the classroom.
“I get to talk to a lot of superintendents, principals and teachers about ways these social media platforms are interfering with kids' learning. It’s also a real problem,” said Weiser.
Child psychologist Dr. Jody Thomas said she’s noticed a change in kids too.
“That really begs the question of, what are we not doing? Because we are engaging in social media, right?” said Dr. Thomas. “We are on Tiktok, and an hour has passed, two hours have passed. The effects of that can be everything from the straight, more simple version of we're not sleeping, and that lack of sleep and the impact on mood.”
Dr. Thomas said lack of sleep can lead to depression and anxiety. She said there are also negative implications of a lack of real in-person social interactions.
However, the legal process is a long one and the youth mental health crisis is playing out right now.
The attorney general’s office said a recent ruling regarding their case against Meta, which own Facebook and Instagram, will allow some of the claims to move forward, including concerns over childrens' online privacy protections and marketing to kids under 13.
Meta previously said, “We share the attorneys general’s commitment to providing teens with safe, positive experiences online, and have already introduced over 30 tools to support teens and their families. We’re disappointed that instead of working productively with companies across the industry to create clear, age-appropriate standards for the many apps teens use, the attorneys general have chosen this path.”
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As for TikTok, more than three years into the investigation on the platform's impacts on kids' health, Weiser said they are running into roadblocks with the company, which he claimed is not turning over key pieces of evidence.
When asked if legal action is the best course when kids are struggling right now, Weiser said it isn’t.
“It’s not the best action. The best action is for companies to take action immediately and change how they operate,” said Weiser. “We will work on a negotiated agreement immediately.”
Or they could end up in court. Either option could take a long time.
TikTok has said they strongly disagree with many of the claims against them and that its inaccurate and misleading.
“I don’t think it’s a technical or legal problem, it’s a relationship problem. We are not having hard conversations with our kids,” said MSU Denver computer science professor Steve Beaty. He said these platforms are designed to be addictive.
“It’s called stickiness,” said Beaty. “How many hours a day do you spend on a platform. Many, many hours. For many of these platforms they hire psychologists to make sure their content is sticky. TikTok has done a particularly good job on that.”
Previous big lawsuits, like Colorado’s legal action against Juul, eventually resulted in changed operations and funding for youth mental health support but also took a long time to reach a conclusion and pay out.
Beaty also recalled a lawsuit against Google regarding their algorithms.
“Google had a major lawsuit about their algorithms they used to push ads towards people,” he said. “I think it changed behaviors not because of lawsuit but they recognized that behavior wasn’t paying off.”
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So how do we help kids now?
Dr. Thomas said instead of blaming kids, recognize what they are up against and the design of these platforms.
“It’s hard for adults to manage, imagine kid's frontal cortex is still in development. That's not fully cooked until we are 25 years old,” she said. “It is quite literally designed to get around that part of our brain, it is a dangerous combination.”
Instead, when she talks to teens she talks about how adults, even famous ones, need help backing off from endless scrolling.
“Some of the most successful people that they would recognize,” said Dr. Thomas, “Athletes, you know, Silicon Valley executives will talk about the fact that, 'hey, I need to put this restriction on myself, because I can't trust my own brain, because I know these things are designed to engage me that way', right?”
She said it’s all about collaboration, acknowledging the good that comes with social media, along with how to protect everyone from the bad.
“We'd approach it kind of like the way that we would start talking to our kids about when they're going to go to parties and we know that there's alcohol or drugs, and how we want to handle that, and how we would deal with that,“ said Dr. Thomas.
As for what’s next with the legal action, Weiser said the companies have yet to come to the table to negotiate.
If the companies don't negotiate to fix issues, like notifications waking kids up at night, and marketing to kids under 13, the issue could end up in court and that could take years to resolve.