Court documents filed in March 2026 reveal that TikTok staff repeatedly flagged serious child safety concerns to company leadership, expressing frustration with the pace and scope of management’s response. The depositions, obtained through multi-district litigation initiated in 2022, shed light on how the platform has managed child protection issues since gaining widespread popularity among young users.
Among the concerns raised by employees was the prevalence of minors appearing in sexual content accessible on TikTok’s Live feature, with viewers able to send digital gifts that generate revenue for the platform. An internal investigation documented that children aged 13 to 15 appeared in approximately 112,000 TikTok Live videos during January 2022 alone. The reports also identified risks including adult grooming of minors and the potential creation of child sexual abuse material. Employees additionally flagged that users under 18 were exploiting loopholes to circumvent age-restricted content filters and prevent parental oversight of their account activity.
Reagen Maher, a former senior safety and investigations official at TikTok from 2021 to 2024, described in her deposition mounting a sustained effort to escalate safety issues with top executives, including the chief operating officer. Internal communications revealed Maher’s frustration with leadership’s assessment of the severity of identified harms. Maher testified that the company was aware of sexual exploitation on the platform prior to a 2022 Forbes article publicizing instances of minors stripping on TikTok Live in exchange for digital currency.
TikTok declined to provide comment to NPR regarding the matters raised in the court documents, instead directing attention to previously published company safety policies. The platform is among multiple social media companies facing lawsuits alleging they designed products to be harmful to minors while concealing known risks. TikTok has settled several cases, including an $8 million settlement in May and a $100 million agreement with Alabama in September, though jury trials on the core allegations remain pending.
Article Attribution | Read More at Article Source
Article summary produced by Claude AI