{"id":308400,"date":"2026-06-15T21:34:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-15T21:34:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/308400\/"},"modified":"2026-06-15T21:34:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-15T21:34:08","slug":"florida-lawsuit-accuses-tiktok-of-violating-states-child-social-media-ban-florida","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/308400\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida lawsuit accuses TikTok of violating state\u2019s child social media ban | Florida"},"content":{"rendered":"

Florida became the latest state to sue TikTok on Monday after the attorney general accused<\/a> the company of violating a state law that limits social media access for teenagers.<\/p>\n

In a press conference, Republican James Uthmeier said TikTok<\/a> exposed children to harmful sexual content and addictive features, such as unlimited scrolling and push notifications. \u201cIt\u2019s designed to keep kids stuck on those screens for hours,\u201d Uthemeier said at a press conference. \u201cOur evidence suggests that so many kids are on TikTok for upwards of six, seven, eight or more hours a day. We are going to get our kids their lives back.\u201d<\/p>\n

Florida enacted a state law last year that bans children under 14 from using social media platforms and requires 15 and 16-year-olds to have their parents permission before creating accounts. Monday\u2019s civil lawsuit<\/a>, which was filed in St Lucie county, argues that TikTok violated this law, and \u201cis actively deceiving Florida parents about the risks of allowing their teens to access this platform\u201d.<\/p>\n

Florida officials accuse the social media platform of falsely telling parents that mature content on its platform, including drugs, nudity, alcohol and profanity is \u201cinfrequent\u201d. Instead of an over 13 age rating, the lawsuit says an honest assessment of the mature content on its platform warranted an over 16 or over 18 age rating. \u201cThese ratings would cause parental restrictions on phones to prevent many kids from downloading the app.\u201d<\/p>\n

TikTok has said it is evaluating the state\u2019s complaint and continuing to update their platform in Florida in response to state law. \u201cTikTok is built with safety at its core,\u201d a company spokesperson said in a statement.<\/p>\n

TikTok\u2019s legal troubles go beyond Florida. The social media company has already been sued by roughly two dozen state attorneys<\/a> general over claims about the addictive nature of its feed, and its harmful mental health effects on children.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Florida became the latest state to sue TikTok on Monday after the attorney general accused the company of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":308401,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-308400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=308400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308400\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/308401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}