Utah became the latest state Tuesday to file a lawsuit against TikTok, alleging the company is “baiting” children into addictive and unhealthy social media habits.
TikTok lures children into hours of social media use, misrepresents the app’s safety and deceptively portrays itself as independent of its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, Utah claims in the lawsuit.
“We will not stand by while these companies fail to take adequate, meaningful action to protect our children. We will prevail in holding social media companies accountable by any means necessary,” Republican Gov. Spencer Cox said at a news conference announcing the lawsuit, which was filed in state court in Salt Lake City.
Fun fact, back in the 80s, cigarette companies owned most of the food production companies. They are responsible for creating most of the addictive natural and artificial flavorings. When they got slapped for making cigarettes addictive, they quickly sold off all their food holdings because they didn’t want to be held financially responsible for making those addictive too.