TikTok's research reportedly acknowledges negative impacts on teens

According to reports from NPR and Kentucky Public Radio, court documents suggest that TikTok executives are aware of the app's potential harm to teenagers.

Fourteen U.S. attorneys general sued TikTok earlier this week, claiming the app harms children's mental health. Much of the material in these lawsuits has been redacted, but reporters were able to read some of that material by copying and pasting.

According to Kentucky's lawsuit, the company's own research shows that “compulsive drinking is correlated with a range of negative mental health effects such as loss of analytical skills, memory formation, contextual thinking, conversational depth, empathy and increased anxiety.”

Additionally, the lawsuit includes internal communications regarding a feature that allows parents to limit their children's TikTok usage – apparently the feature only reduced usage by an average of 1.5 minutes per day, with the company instead citing its success as “improving “measures public trust in TikTok platform via media coverage.”

A TikTok spokesperson said it was “highly irresponsible” for NPR to publish excerpts from the lawsuit, which he claimed “cherry-picks misleading quotes and takes outdated documents out of context to misrepresent our commitment to community safety.” to represent”.