Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall filed a lawsuit Tuesday against TikTok Inc. and its Chinese parent company, ByteDance Inc., accusing the social media giant of deliberately targeting children with addictive and harmful content while misleading parents about safety measures.

The lawsuit, filed in Montgomery County Circuit Court, alleges TikTok has fueled a mental health crisis among Alabama’s youth through algorithms designed to maximize engagement at the expense of user well-being. It claims the platform pushes videos that promote depression, self-harm, eating disorders and drug use, as well as dangerous viral “challenges.”

“Today we join concerned parents across our state to stand up for Alabama’s children. TikTok preys on young people, feeding them dangerous and damaging content while lying to parents about how safe the app really is. This platform was designed to addict kids and put profits ahead of the mental health of an entire generation,” Marshall said in a statement. “TikTok’s so-called ‘safety features’ are a joke. They are nothing more than a marketing ploy to trick parents into trusting a product that TikTok knows full well is dangerous. Alabama families deserve the truth, and we will make sure they get it.”

The lawsuit takes aim at features such as “Kids Mode” and “Restricted Mode,” calling them ineffective and easily circumvented. According to the complaint, TikTok fails to meaningfully restrict adult material, leaving children vulnerable despite its advertised safeguards.

Marshall’s office argues that TikTok’s design is no accident. The complaint states that over one-third of TikTok’s daily U.S. users are age 14 or younger, and that this reach is the result of a calculated campaign to dominate the youth market. It further alleges that ByteDance has emphasized collecting user data since the app’s inception.

“We cannot ignore the giant problem with this platform: TikTok is owned by Chinese corporation ByteDance, which mines sensitive American data from the People’s Republic of China, where corporations have a legal obligation to share that data collected with the Chinese national intelligence services. TikTok and ByteDance are knowingly committing espionage against Americans’ personal information, and they are exploiting our children specifically,” Marshall said.

The state is seeking civil penalties under Alabama’s Deceptive Trade Practices Act, along with compensatory and punitive damages and injunctive relief to end what it calls TikTok’s deceptive safety claims.

Marshall joins a growing chorus of state and federal officials scrutinizing TikTok’s influence on children and its ties to China. His lawsuit adds Alabama to the list of states taking legal action against the platform over alleged harm to minors.

A copy of the complaint can be viewed at www.alabamaag.gov.