The US government has filed a new lawsuit against TikTok, accusing the social media company of unlawfully collecting children’s data
Officials said the firm, and parent company ByteDance, were “repeat offenders”, noting a similar case brought in 2019.
National and state lawmakers have frequently raised data-protection and national-security concerns about the app.
In April, President Joe Biden signed a law that will ban TikTok in the U.S. unless ByteDance sells the company within nine months.
Although TikTok offers a version of the app known as “Kids Mode” for children under 13
As recently as 2023, according to the complaint, a parent visiting TikTok’s website to request deletion of their child’s account and information had to scroll through multiple webpages to find and click.
A review of 1,700 requests from parents to cancel accounts that were made between 2019 and 2020 found that 30% were still active in November 2021, according to the filing.
Surveys by Pew Research have found that more than 60% of US teens aged 13-17 use the platform, more than half of them on a daily basis.
