TikTok is subject to EU investigation due to 'addictive design'

European Union regulators on Monday opened an investigation into TikTok for possible breaches of online content rules aimed at protecting children. They say the “addictive design” of the popular social media platform risks exposing young people to harmful content.

The move expands a preliminary investigation conducted in recent months into whether TikTok, owned by Chinese company ByteDance, violated a new European law, the Digital Services Act, that requires major social media companies to stop the spread of harmful material. Under the law, companies can be penalized with up to 6 percent of their global revenues.

TikTok has been under the supervision of EU regulators for months. The company was fined about $370 million in September for having weak safeguards to protect the personal information of children using the platform. Policymakers in the United States are also grappling with how to regulate the platform for harmful content and data privacy — concerns heightened by TikTok's ties to China.

The according to the European Commission in particular, it focused on how the company managed the risk of “negative impacts” arising from the site's design, including algorithmic systems that it said could “encourage behavioral addictions” or “so-called 'rabbit hole effects' would create', whereby the user is increasingly drawn into the content of the site.

These risks could potentially endanger a person's “physical and mental well-being,” the committee said.

“The safety and well-being of online users in Europe are crucial,” Margrethe Vestager, the European Commission's executive vice president who oversees digital policy, said in a statement. “TikTok needs to take a closer look at the services they offer and carefully consider the risks they pose to their users – both young and old.”

TikTok said in a statement that it had “groundbreaking features and settings to protect teens and keep those under 13 off the platform, issues the entire industry is grappling with.”

The company added: “We will continue to work with experts and the industry to keep young people safe on TikTok, and now look forward to having the opportunity to explain this work in detail to the committee.”

TikTok has become a target of parents, policymakers and regulators concerned about the company's data collection practices and the platform's effect on young people's mental health.

TikTok CEO Shou Chew was questioned by U.S. lawmakers last March about TikTok's ties to China and the app's impact on children. He emphasized that TikTok is an independent company not influenced by China and mentioned a 60-minute screen time limit, which parents can control, for users 12 and under.

In Europe, where TikTok has more than 150 million monthly users, regulators last year faulted the service for having settings that made videos and posts public by default, exposing the information and data of the youngest users. They said TikTok also used so-called dark patterns, a system that encouraged users to select privacy-invading options during the sign-up process and when posting videos.

The EU investigation will also look at the effectiveness of TikTok's age verification tools, aimed at preventing minors' access to inappropriate content. It also checks whether TikTok provides a list of advertisements that is searchable and reliable, as required under the Digital Services Act.

European regulators launched a separate investigation in October into whether social media platform X violated the Digital Services Act over the prevalence of gory images and terrorist content related to the war between Israel and Hamas.