\u2018Addictive-by-design\u2019 features<\/p>\n
The second part of the complaint targets TikTok\u2019s underlying design, including its personalized \u201cFor You\u201d feed, endless scrolling, push notifications and other features intended to keep users engaged.<\/p>\n
Sunday said teenagers described the effects of those features during a series of \u201cteenTALK\u201d events<\/a> his office held last school year. Students told him they knew spending hours on the app was unhealthy but felt unable to stop.<\/p>\n Many also introduced him to the term \u201cbedrot,\u201d Sunday said, a term that means spending hours in bed scrolling through a phone after waking up or before going to sleep.<\/p>\n \u201cThey lose hours at a stretch in the morning when they wake up or in the evening, just scrolling on their phones for hours,\u201d Sunday said. \u201cTikTok\u2019s infinite scroll feature promotes that. And if you haven\u2019t been on the app in a while, they will send you a very enticing push notification to try and lure you back.\u201d<\/p>\n The state alleges TikTok\u2019s features are \u201caddictive-by-design,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n More than two-thirds of American teenagers use TikTok, and about 1 in 5 say they use it \u201calmost constantly,\u201d according to Pew Research Center data<\/a>. Internal documents obtained by the Kentucky attorney general<\/a> as part of that state\u2019s lawsuit suggest the company knew their safety measures were mostly ineffective in reducing youth consumption of the content, including adult content.<\/p>\n In an email to WHYY News, a TikTok spokesperson said the lawsuit is misleading and ignores safety measures the platform has in place.<\/p>\n \u201cTeen accounts have 50 preset safety, privacy and security settings built-in, and TikTok\u2019s Family Pairing tools give parents direct control over screen time and content filters,\u201d the spokesperson said. \u201cWe will vigorously defend against these claims.\u201d<\/p>\n The lawsuit contends that the \u201cFamily Pairing\u201d feature is \u201cdeficient\u201d and \u201cineffective.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u2018Addictive-by-design\u2019 features The second part of the complaint targets TikTok\u2019s underlying design, including its personalized \u201cFor You\u201d feed,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":263565,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[3649,2676,28,30,29,12870],"class_list":["post-263564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-attorney-general-dave-sunday","tag-lawsuit","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news","tag-tiktok"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=263564"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263564\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/263565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}