‘Addictive-by-design’ features
The second part of the complaint targets TikTok’s underlying design, including its personalized “For You” feed, endless scrolling, push notifications and other features intended to keep users engaged.
Sunday said teenagers described the effects of those features during a series of “teenTALK” events his office held last school year. Students told him they knew spending hours on the app was unhealthy but felt unable to stop.
Many also introduced him to the term “bedrot,” Sunday said, a term that means spending hours in bed scrolling through a phone after waking up or before going to sleep.
“They lose hours at a stretch in the morning when they wake up or in the evening, just scrolling on their phones for hours,” Sunday said. “TikTok’s infinite scroll feature promotes that. And if you haven’t been on the app in a while, they will send you a very enticing push notification to try and lure you back.”
The state alleges TikTok’s features are “addictive-by-design,” using information about individual users to continually refine the videos placed in front of them, removing natural stopping points and encouraging children to remain on the app longer.
More than two-thirds of American teenagers use TikTok, and about 1 in 5 say they use it “almost constantly,” according to Pew Research Center data. Internal documents obtained by the Kentucky attorney general as part of that state’s lawsuit suggest the company knew their safety measures were mostly ineffective in reducing youth consumption of the content, including adult content.
In an email to WHYY News, a TikTok spokesperson said the lawsuit is misleading and ignores safety measures the platform has in place.
“Teen accounts have 50 preset safety, privacy and security settings built-in, and TikTok’s Family Pairing tools give parents direct control over screen time and content filters,” the spokesperson said. “We will vigorously defend against these claims.”
The lawsuit contends that the “Family Pairing” feature is “deficient” and “ineffective.”