LINCOLN, Neb. (KOLN) - Attorney General Mike Hilgers released several key excerpts from internal TikTok documents on Friday.
According to the attorney general, the excerpts show that TikTok knew its platform was addictive, that compulsive use on TikTok is rampant and that TikTok’s purported safety tools are ineffective.
The excerpts of the internal TikTok documents are part of a lawsuit Attorney General Hilgers filed against the company in May, which is proceeding before Judge Lori A. Maret in Lancaster District Court.
Until this week, any internal TikTok documents quoted in the complaint were redacted from public view.
The internal TikTok document excerpts now made public show that:
- TikTok achieves its success from “many coercive design tactics” and features that “limit user agency,” including infinite scroll, auto-play, and constant notifications.
- TikTok affects its users in a way that is psychologically similar to a “slot machine” and TikTok admits that the “product in itself has baked into it compulsive use” and that “compulsive usage on TikTok is rampant.”
- TikTok admits that its young users “have minimal ability to self-regulate effectively” and lack the “executive control function” needed to control their screen time.
- Compulsive usage of TikTok “correlates with a slew of negative mental health effects like loss of analytical skills, memory formation, contextual thinking, conversational depth, empathy, and increased anxiety.”
- TikTok is aware that compulsive usage of its platform interferes with users’ “essential personal responsibilities like sufficient sleep, work/school responsibilities, and connecting with loved ones” and causes “negative emotions.”
- Beyond being aware that TikTok use regularly interferes with users’ sleep, TikTok also knows that “[s]leep [is] unanimously linked to health outcomes” and that “[b]ad sleep is a source of mental health issues.”
- TikTok is aware that many teens on its platform find that TikTok is addictive, inappropriate, and interferes with their lives in unhealthy ways.
- TikTok knows that many of its publicized safety features, like age verification and Family Pairing, are easily circumvented or not widely used but still considers them “good talking point[s]” in response to scrutiny from “policymakers.”
These significant portions of the complaint have now been unredacted and are available to the public. You can access the public version of the State of Nebraska’s Complaint below:
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