North Carolina parents, advocates weigh in as 14 states file lawsuits against TikTok

RALEIGH, N.C. (WTVD) -- On Tuesday, there was a flurry of lawsuits filed in states across the country against social media giant TikTok and its parent company ByteDance. Attorneys General from 14 states -- including Josh Stein -- filed those suits individually, claiming the app has done irreversible harm to kids.

"We allege that TikTok designed its app to addict kids, lied to everyone about how dangerous the app was for children and deceived parents and the public by telling them that it had safety features in place to protect kids, safety features that they knew did not work," Stein said.

Parents that ABC11 spoke with Tuesday said that social media usage for their kids is top of mind.

"This can be a tough world to navigate and you need your own brain to do that and not this -- the collective brain of what's on social media. So we talk a lot about that in my house," said Alyson Smith, a Cary parent and former PTA President.

Alyson's kids are 12 and 7 -- and they're not on social media just yet -- but she's wary of the potential time drain it could pose.

"TikTok specifically is pretty insidious because it just keeps going and going and going," she said.

Despite the simultaneous lawsuits -- which come roughly a year after Stein joined dozens of other AGs in filing suit against Facebook's parent company Meta -- advocates for healthy social media usage believe bans and lawsuits may not be the best way to do that.

"With regulation should also come education and any legislation should be married with, well, how are we proactively helping students," said Laura Tierney, Founder & CEO of The Social Institute.

The Social Institute works to equip students and families with skills to navigate the modern social world, and Tierney said she's seen parents grow frustrated over their kids' social media saturation.

"That's why I do think it's important like that, that families are educated, but also students are educated in in schools at home about where they could use tech to control tech," she said.

Tierney believes families need to talk about best practices for navigating new tech or risk losing out on the positives that social media can generate.

"The most important thing is helping students use it for good, see that good and avoid those pitfalls at the same time," Tierney said.

In response to the lawsuits, a TikTok spokesperson said:

"We strongly disagree with these claims, many of which we believe to be inaccurate and misleading. We're proud of and remain deeply committed to the work we've done to protect teens and we will continue to update and improve our product. We provide robust safeguards, proactively remove suspected underage users, and have voluntarily launched safety features such as default screen time limits, family pairing, and privacy by default for minors under 16. We've endeavored to work with the Attorneys General for over two years, and it is incredibly disappointing they have taken this step rather than work with us on constructive solutions to industrywide challenges."