US government sues TikTok for allowing children to create accounts

Millions of Americans under the age of 13 created and used TikTok accounts without parental consent, and the platform failed to delete those accounts or the personal information associated with them when the children’s parents requested it, the lawsuit says.

The lawsuit claims these practices violate the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act and a 2019 agreement between the U.S. government and TikTok under which the app agreed to remove videos of users under 13.

Instead, TikTok allowed people under 13 to create “kid mode” accounts that still shared some of users’ personal information without notifying parents or seeking permission, the Justice Department alleges in a complaint filed in federal court for the Central District of California.

The lawsuit claims that the app also makes it easy to lie about your age by allowing you to create accounts with “unknown ages” or restart the registration process with a new date of birth if the app initially tried to open an account in child mode because the first date of birth entered indicated an age below 13.

The Justice Department has asked the court to issue a new permanent injunction prohibiting TikTok from violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act in the future and to impose an unspecified fine on TikTok for violating laws relating to children’s personal data, as courts in the Netherlands, Ireland and the United Kingdom have done.

This is a developing story that will be updated.