Seven French families are suing TikTok, accusing the social network of “direct harm” to the health of young people, which led to two of them committing suicide at the age of 15, their lawyer said.
Laura Boutron-Marmion, a lawyer representing the Algos Victima family collective, filed the lawsuit with the judge.
“I’m using the basic principles of French civil liability,” she said in an interview, adding that for “any fault committed by another person in the law, you have to pay damages.”
The combination of the app’s “addictive” design and lack of content moderation “creates a really problematic product,” Boutron-Marmion said.
“Virality is mixed with harmful content,” she added.
TikTok said that in 2020, parents will be able to control and limit the use of the app by their teenagers through the Family Connection mode, and emphasized that the platform has more than 630 French-speaking moderators.
“When people do a search that includes words such as suicide, they are immediately redirected to a page with special resources, as well as the number of a local hotline or prevention hotline,” TikTok said.
The state of health of adolescents
Boutron-Marmion also emphasized the vulnerability of children and adolescents who may be exposed to content that promotes, for example, self-harm or suicide.
Stéphanie Mistre, the mother of one of the teenagers who committed suicide, told French media that her “daughter could still be here today” if not for the complaint.
Mistre filed a complaint in September 2023 for “incitement to suicide,” “failure to assist a person in danger,” and “propaganda or advertising of means of committing suicide,” which, according to French media, is still under investigation.
“The deterioration in the health of adolescents is very, very serious. These are children who are either close to death or no longer living,” said Boutron-Marmion.
She noted that the version of the app deployed in China, Douyin, has safeguards for minors’ accounts, such as a daily time limit or digital curfew.
Lawsuits against social media platforms
“TikTok will appear before the French court today and will have to respond with arguments. After that, of course, the judges will make a decision,” she said.
Last month, more than a dozen US states sued TikTok for allegedly harming the mental health of young people.
The Bytedance app is not the only one under attack: Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat, has been the target of lawsuits over the potential impact of the platforms on their young users.
