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Documents obtained by NPR from the lawsuit filed against TikTok in Kentucky indicate that company executives are aware that the app's tools are insufficient to combat compulsive use of the app by younger users.
Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman even claims that TikTok was “designed specifically to be an addiction machine, targeting children who are still in the process of developing adequate self-control.”
The documents cite TikTok's own studies, in which the company reportedly found that its time-limiting feature was ineffective. In cases where the feature limited use of the app to 60 minutes per day, teenage users still managed to spend 107 minutes on TikTok. TikTok apparently considered the feature a success due to “increased public trust.”
TikTok’s studies have also found correlations between compulsive use of the app and “negative mental health effects,” including loss of “analytical skills, memory formation, contextual thinking, depth of conversation, empathy, and increased anxiety.”
In response to the sharing of this information, TikTok spokesperson Alex Haurek said the Kentucky complaint was based on “outdated documents” that were taken out of context. Furthermore, Haurek said TikTok has “robust safeguards in place, including proactively removing users suspected of being minors.”
