Is TikTok harmful to minors? Iowa's attorney general joining others to find out
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It's safe to say Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller won't be posting his trendiest new dance moves on TikTok any time soon.
Miller's office announced Wednesday it is joining a multistate investigation of the popular social media platform built around short video clips. The bipartisan coalition of state attorneys general is examining how the company markets itself to minors, and whether it has had harmful effects on children and teens.
“TikTok is just the latest social media platform to draw in children, potentially creating a negative effect on their physical, emotional, and mental well-being," Miller said in a news release. "As with other social media platforms, like Instagram, we must learn more about how TikTok engages with children.”
It's not clear how many states are signed on to the new probe, which also will involve the attorneys general of California, Florida, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New Jersey, Tennessee and Vermont.
Related: Long before becoming the 'Facebook whistleblower,' Frances Haugen was a curious student in Iowa City
This isn't the first time state law enforcement leaders have banded together to confront social media companies. In May 2021, Miller, a Democrat, joined a bipartisan group of 44 attorneys general in objecting to a proposal by Facebook to create a version of Instagram marketed to children under 13.
Miller also joined a group of attorneys general in November to investigate how Facebook, now known as Meta, markets its current Instagram platform to children.
Previously: Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller joins other states in probe of Instagram's effects on kids' mental health
The new investigation will study, among other questions, "the techniques used by TikTok to boost young user engagement, including increasing the duration of time spent on the platform and frequency of engagement with the platform," Miller's release said. It raises the possibility that some of TikTok's actions may violate state consumer protection laws.
TikTok, first launched in 2017, also has repeatedly been embroiled in foreign relations controversies, in part due to its ownership by Chinese company ByteDance. In 2019, federal officials began investigating whether data security or propaganda concerns with TikTok threatened U.S. national security. At one point, then-President Donald Trump tried to arrange a deal for U.S.-based Microsoft to buy TikTok, which ultimately did not happen.
More recently, TikTok's profile has been bolstered by the war in Ukraine, where it has been used both by Ukrainians documenting battles and pro-Russian accounts spreading anti-Ukrainian content.
William Morris covers courts for the Des Moines Register. He can be contacted at wrmorris2@registermedia.com, 715-573-8166 or on Twitter at @DMRMorris.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller joins multistate TikTok investigation
