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Leaked documents from inside TikTok suggest the social media giant intentionally endangers kids to benefit its bottom line.

A group of 13 states and the District of Columbia filed individual suits against the Chinese-owned company earlier this month, alleging:

TikTok’s underlying business model focuses on maximizing young users’ time on the platform so the company can boost revenue from selling targeted ads.

The suits claim TikTok’s addictive features, like autoplay and 24-hour push notifications, as well as, marketing strategies, like promoting beauty filters, harm children’s mental and physical health. Evidence uncovered in the states’ two-year investigation into the platform suggests the company knew about these problems and allowed them to continue.

TikTok’s internal documents and communications should have been hidden from the public. However, problems with the redaction in South Carolina’s and Kentucky’s cases prematurely revealed some clandestine details.

It doesn’t look good for TikTok.

Users 12-and-Up

On the Apple App Store, TikTok claims its content is suitable for children ages 12 and up. But Apple challenged that age rating in 2022, according to evidence in South Carolina’s case against TikTok.

The Washington Post reports:

A team at Apple reviewing TikTok’s rating found that the app features ‘frequent or intense mature or suggestive content’ and pressed the platform to raise its recommended age to 17 and over.

But TikTok refused to give up its kid-friendly rating. Instead, it claimed it took “aggressive strategies” to filter and remove the kinds of content Apple flagged. South Carolina’s suit says it didn’t work. TikTok still shows children inappropriate and vulgar content, the case alleges, but the company doesn’t want to cop to it.

Big Business

New York Attorney General Letitia James, who helped lead the charge against TikTok, says TikTok has financial incentives to keep its age rating low. A press release explaining the case claims approximately 35% of TikTok’s American ad revenue comes from children and teens.

Leaked information from Kentucky’s case, reviewed and published by NPR, supports James’ assertion.

TikTok knows know many of its most dedicated users are minors. One internal study of its users found 95% of American smartphone users under 17-years-old use the app. Another study of TikTok’s engagement statistics notes, “As expected, across most engagement metrics, the younger the user, the better the performance.”

The company knows it must keep young users engaged. In one employee chat regarding a TikTok tool meant to decrease the time minors spend on the app, a project manager admitted, “Our goal is not to reduce the time spent [on TikTok].” Another employee added, “[The goal is] to contribute to daily active users and retention [of other users].”

Flimsy Features

The aforementioned tool allows parents to impose an hour-long TikTok time limit — a feature that would impact TikTok’s goal if it worked. But it doesn’t. TikTok estimates it only reduces usage time by an average of 1.5 minutes.

Another internal document suggests the screen-time limit wasn’t built to work well. TikTok only evaluated the feature’s success by how it “improved public trust in the TikTok platform via media coverage.”

TikTok apparently instructs their content moderators to perform a similarly shoddy job. A document referring to “younger users/U13” tells moderators to leave underage users’ accounts alone unless it explicitly identifies them as under 13 years old.

Addiction, Inc.

TikTok doesn’t just turn a blind eye to minors on its platform — it recruits them.

The platform discovered users must watch 260 videos to form a TikTok habit. Kentucky’s lawsuit elaborates:

While this may seem substantial, TikTok videos can be as short as 8 seconds and are played for viewers in rapid-fire succession, automatically. Thus, in under 35 minutes, an average user is likely to become addicted to the platform.

TikTok knows its most engaging features cause young people to compulsively open its app. It also knows what problems these compulsions cause. The company’s internal research concludes:

Compulsive usage correlates with a slew of negative mental health effects like loss of analytical skills, memory formation, contextual thinking, conversational depth, empathy and increased anxiety. … [It] also interferes with essential responsibilities like sufficient sleep, work/school responsibilities and connecting with loved ones.

Trapped in PainHub

One of the platform’s most addictive features is its algorithm, which learns and feeds users the kinds of videos they like. But ingesting too much of the same content can quickly skew the way users view the world.

A good example of this comes from one of TikTok’s employees, who participated in an internal study of “filter bubbles” — the kind of homogenous content filtering that occurs when social media algorithms determine what posts users engage with.

This employee wrote:

After following several ‘painhub’ and ‘sadnotes’ accounts, it took me 20 minutes to drop into a ‘negative’ filter bubble. The intensive density of negative content make me lower down mood (sic) and increase my sadness feelings (sic) though I am in a high spirit in my recent life.

The employee is referencing TikTok accounts featuring exclusively sad stories and comments from people in pain. Ostensibly designed to support those going through a hard time, an excess of this kind of content makes the world seem like a perpetually dark place.

To avoid filter bubbles, TikTok claims to offer a “Refresh” feature that resets the algorithm. James’ press release says this feature “does not work as TikTok claims.”

Online Strip Club

So TikTok knows minors generate big profits, creates addictive features to keep them on the app, turns a blind eye to underage users and allows them to binge on inappropriate content. Yikes.

Unfortunately for everyone involved, it gets worse.

One incident documented in Kentucky’s case involves TikTok Live, a feature that allows users to broadcast live videos of themselves. In 2022, TikTok discovered “a significant” number of adults had started paying minors to strip on live video.

You read that right. In one month alone, adults sent more than 1 million ‘gifts’ — real money converted into digital currency — to kids for ‘transactional’ behavior.

D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb calls this an “unlicensed payment system” that incentivizes minors to prostitute themselves. He told the Post:

TikTok has designed its money transmission business to lure children in, using childlike cartoons and emojis to make it look like the children are playing games, when in fact they are being exploited financially.

In contrast, a TikTok official commented to coworkers:

One of our key discoveries during this project that has turned into a major challenge with Live business is that the content that gets the highest engagement may not be the content we want on our platform.

Why It Matters

The more we learn about social media, the more obvious it seems that children shouldn’t get within ten feet of it. To learn more about what you can do to keep your child screen-free, take a look at the articles linked below.

At least commit to enforcing strong boundaries around technology. Some ideas include requiring your children to scroll social media in public area, regularly checking their social media feeds for inappropriate content and educating them about sextortion and other predatory online behaviors.

Remember that companies like TikTok and Meta will not reliably protect your child from exploitation and inappropriate content. It’s up to parents to keep kids safe online.

Additional Articles and Resources

Four Ways to Protect Your Kids from Bad Tech, From Social Psychologist Jonathan Haidt

Parent-Run Groups Help Stop Childhood Smartphone Use

Survey Finds Teens Use Social Media More Than Four Hours Per Day — Here’s What Parents Can Do

Teen Boys Falling Prey to Financial Sextortion — Here’s What Parents Can Do

Instagram’s Sextortion Safety Measures — Too Little, Too Late?

Kid’s Online Safety Act — What It Is and Why It’s a Big Deal

Instagram Content Restrictions Don’t Work, Tests Show

Zuckerberg Implicated in Meta’s Failures to Protect Children

Surgeon General Recommends Warning on Social Media Platforms

‘The Dirty Dozen List’ — Corporations Enable and Profit from Sexual Exploitation

All Patches Johnson Inge wanted was to look up the date of her 12-year-old’s check-up. When Carilion Clinic’s online patient portal no longer showed her son’s information, she assumed it was a glitch.

“I thought I would check it out in a few days, and they’d have it fixed,” she told the Daily Citizen.

But Johnson Inge’s problem wasn’t a glitch. Carilion Clinic blocks parents’ access to their children’s MyChart account when they turn 12. The policy is spelled out in a colorful pamphlet addressed to children, which the Daily Citizen found buried deep in Carilion’s website. Johnson Inge never saw it.

“Carilion [doesn’t] send you a notification about it,” she explained. “They don’t tell you when you sign up that it’s only good until [your child] turns 12.”

The devoted mother didn’t know anything was wrong until she phoned a friend.

I called one of my girlfriends who takes her daughter to the same pediatrician. I asked, “Are you able to see her records now that she’s turned 12?” I wondered whether you had to renew it or something. She called back and said, “Oh, you’re not going to believe this.”

It was all too real. Carilion had terminated Johnson Inge’s online access to her son’s information. If she wanted it back, they said, her son would have to sign-off in a private meeting with a doctor.

“I told [the employee I was talking to], ‘Over my dead body,’” Johnson Inge recalls. “She was not happy with me when we finished our phone call. But if I allowed that to happen, I don’t know what they would have talked about without me.”

Further communication with a Carilion privacy analyst revealed Johnson Inge and her son would have to visit the doctor in person to restore even limited access to his MyChart account. Carilion’s legal department declined to comment.

Johnson Inge says the bizarre policy violates her parental rights and impedes her ability to care for her son.

Legally, a 12-year-old’s signature means what? Absolutely nothing. They’re not adults. They can’t vote, they can’t drink, they can’t serve in the military. I had to practically sign my life away [at the bank] to let him have his own little kid savings account. Why should he have to give me permission for anything?

She continues,

I pay for him. I drive him everywhere. I mean, he’s my child — my dependent. I feed him. I pay for his school. [My son, my husband and I], we’re a family, and this is just wrong from a pro-family standpoint.

Founding Freedoms Law Center (FFLC), the legal arm of Virginia’s Family Policy Council, tells the Daily Citizen Johnson Inge isn’t alone. Several parents have also reported struggling to access their children’s online medical records at University of Virginia-affiliated clinics.

An FFLC legal fact-sheet for parents like Johnson Inge affirms, “In Virginia, as a general rule, healthcare providers are required to make minors’ medical records available to parents if requested.”

The only exception to this rule is “if the healthcare provider believes that parental review of a minor’s records would be reasonably likely to cause the minor or another person substantial harm.”

So, is Carilion’s treatment of Johnson Inge illegal?

Technically, no. While Virginians have a general right to access their children’s medical records, they don’t have a right to access them online. FFLC is working on a bill that would clarify Virginia parents’ right to access their child’s medical records online and in-person.

Until then, medical groups like Carilion and UVA can continue giving parents the run-around.

But skating by on a legal technicality doesn’t mean hospitals are acting ethically. FFLC’s fact sheet warns that hospitals may not inform parents of all their rights, especially when it comes to online health portals:

Occasionally, parents are told by healthcare providers that they may only have limited access — or perhaps no access at all — to their minor child’s medical records. … Sometimes, parents are even told, inaccurately, that they may not access some or all of their child’s medical records without their teenager’s express authorization.

Carillion’s privacy analyst told Johnson Inge she could still access her son’s information through the hospital’s Medical Records Office. But this right isn’t spelled out anywhere in the PDF laying out Carilion’s MyChart policy.

In fact, the document perpetuates the lie FFLC warns parents against — that kids must consent for parents to see even basic medical information about allergies and vaccinations.

For Johnson Inge, the issue is bigger than medical records or misleading one-pagers. It’s about power.

It’s dangerous [for doctors] to have this level of control over my child and my family. I just think it’s very concerning that they think they can tell me how to run my household or what I have access to for my own child.

Let Johnson Inge’s experience inform the way you interact with the medical system. Consider carefully whether you are okay allowing a physician to talk to your child privately. You can also ask your child if they would feel comfortable talking to a doctor privately, and if not, encourage them to speak up in the doctor’s office.

Don’t forget to contact your state’s Focus on the Family-allied Family Policy Council to learn about your right to read your child’s medical records online.

Additional Articles and Resources

Selecting a Physician

Doctor Visits and Exam Room Expectations for Parents of Teens

How to Get the Best Care From Your Child’s Doctor