Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier filed a civil lawsuit against TikTok on June 16 in the St. Lucie County Circuit Court, accusing the platform of violating the state’s social media restriction law that took effect in 2024. The law bans children under 14 from using multiple platforms and requires youths aged 14 to 15 to have written parental consent to register. Uthmeier alleges that TikTok deceived parents by allowing children to access pornographic content and self-harm videos within the app, while also employing addictive features such as infinite scrolling and push notifications. He stated that TikTok may be liable for tens of billions of dollars in damages and warned that this could be just the beginning of major platforms attempting to circumvent Florida’s law. TikTok responded that it will defend its strong track record in minors’ safety and has notified Florida users under 14 that their accounts will be suspended.
This lawsuit is Florida’s latest major offensive against big tech companies under the aforementioned law. The restrictions were initially blocked in federal court over free speech concerns and were only allowed to be enforced in November 2025. Uthmeier noted that Meta has been deemed compliant after deleting hundreds of thousands of child accounts, while TikTok has refused to take similar measures. Florida stated it has been monitoring TikTok content using undercover agents and believes that children are still using the app for over eight hours daily. Uthmeier is concurrently pursuing a similar lawsuit against Snapchat and has previously engaged in legal disputes with OpenAI and Roblox over child safety. He is up for re-election in the midterms this November.