Attorney General Ellison joins bipartisan coalition urging TikTok and Snapchat to give parents more control

March 29, 2022 (SAINT PAUL) — Mississippi Attorney General Keith Ellison and a bipartisan coalition of 44 attorneys general sent a letter to TikTok and Snapchat this week to urge them to give parents the ability to monitor their children’s social media usage and protect their children from online threats by using parental control apps.

“My job is to help all Minnesotans — especially the youngest and most vulnerable Minnesotans — live with dignity, safety, and respect,” Attorney General Ellison said. “We all know that sometimes, dignity, safety, and respect are hard to come by on social media. Our children are unable on their own to navigate the real and potential harms of social media usage — and these harms can be very serious, up to and including self-harm. I’ve joined this bipartisan coalition because it is within the power of these companies to conform to widespread industry practice and give parents greater ability to protect their children from harm. I’ll keep using the power of my office to fight to keep our children safe.”

Research increasingly shows the negative impact that social media can have on the physical, emotional, and mental well-being of children and teenagers. These range from decreased self-esteem and greater body-image dissatisfaction to increased exposure to cyberbullying and sexual predation. In 2021, the parental-control app Bark reported that it had analyzed more than 3.4 billion messages across texts, email, apps, and social media platforms and found that:

• 70% of tweens and 91% of teens encountered nudity or content of a sexual nature.

• 75% of tweens and 93% of teens engaged in conversations surrounding drugs/alcohol.

• 81% of tweens and 95% of teens expressed or experienced violent subject matter/thoughts.

• 72% of tweens and 85% of teens experienced bullying as a bully, victim, or witness.

• 43% of tweens and 75% of teens were involved in a self-harm/suicidal situation.

As Attorney General Ellison and the bipartisan coalition note in their letter, “Parental control apps can alert parents or schools to messages and posts on your platforms that have the potential to be harmful and dangerous. Apps can also alert parents if their child manifests a desire for self-harm or suicide. On other platforms where these apps are allowed to operate appropriately parents have received notifications of millions of instances of severe bullying and hundreds of thousands of self-harm situations, showing that these apps have the potential to save lives and prevent harm to our youth.”

Social media platforms already engage in some content moderation and operate under some community guidelines, but these are not always sufficient to protect children and teenagers who are particularly vulnerable to online threats, especially with regard to direct messaging. Parental control apps empower parents to be full partners with the platforms to maintain a safe space online for their children.

Attorney General Ellison has previously expressed concern about the negative impacts of social media platforms on the youngest Minnesotans. In May 2021, he joined a bipartisan coalition of 44 attorneys general in urging Facebook to abandon its plans to launch a version of Instagram for children under 13. In November 2021, he joined attorneys general from across the country in announcing an investigation into Meta Platforms, Inc., formerly known as Facebook, for providing and promoting Instagram to children. Earlier this month, Attorney General Ellison joined a nationwide investigation of attorneys general from around the country into an investigation into TikTok’s for providing and promoting its social-media platform to children and young adults while use is associated with physical and mental-health harms.

Attorney General Ellison was joined in today’s letter to TikTok and Snapchat by Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Finch and North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein, who co-led the letter, and the attorneys general of Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Guam, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.