As we mentioned at the top of the show, TikTok is facing another round of legal pressure.

This time, though, it's not the US Justice Department.

It's a lawsuit filed by a bipartisan group of 14 attorneys general from across the country, including New Jersey's Matt Platkin today said the more he learned about the app, both as a parent and as the state's top law enforcement officer, the more he became horrified and alarmed by it.

Senior correspondent Joanna Gagis has the details.

Today, my office sued TikTok.

ByteDance, which is its parent company, and its affiliates in state court for engaging in a pattern of unconscionable and abusive business practices that favor the almighty dollar over the mental health and safety of our youngest residents.

New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin announced this new lawsuit against TikTok today that he says he's filing on behalf of the 2 million new Jersey residents under the age of 18 who have been specifically targeted by TikTok.

TikTok has violated the New Jersey Consumer Fraud Act by designing a platform that consistently and deliberately targets our youth to become more compulsive users without making them or their parents fully aware of the risks.

The suit names some of the problematic strategies used by TikTok, like autoplay, infinite scroll, recommended videos, and algorithms that track users behavior design.

With one thing in mind, says acting director of the Division of Consumer Affairs Carrie Fierce, aimed at turning our children into social media addicts.

And TikTok is deliberately exploiting these reactions to target American children in China.

ByteDance actively strives to protect young users and provides a different version of TikTok to children under the age of 18 to reduce harm.

Platkin says the founder, who created TikTok, called American teens a, quote, golden audience, and the lawsuits focused on these dangerous practices designed to hook kids immediately while also failing to protect them.

Children are automatically fed a never ending stream of videos curated just for them by an algorithm designed to prevent them from closing the app.

And when they do finally close the app, TikTok sends them push notifications.

TikTok goes so far as to trick children with badge notification displays that supposedly show the number of unread messages or notifications.

Little do these children know, these numbers are entirely made up and that they advertise time limits to parents that are easily overturned by the teenage user.

But it's not just the time spent on the app, but also dangerous content they can encounter.

The lawsuit blames TikTok for not removing content that breaks its own safety guidelines.

It's an issue that John Patrick, alum at Rutgers School of Health, has researched.

We don't want young people being exposed to content, that glorifies or normalizes, drinking, tobacco use of any kind, other drug use or other harmful behavior, or worse, posts that are targeted directly to teens already struggling with mental health issues.

It's not going to be every post that their kids seized, but it is a possibility that a young person struggling with depression can go online and, find instructions to how to hurt themselves.

It's been one year since Platkin joined with 41 other AG's to bring suit against meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, for similar practices that they say harm children.

Today, 12 other states have filed similar but separate suits against TikTok.

There's been lawsuits filed in Indiana, I believe, in Kansas and Louisiana, and a few other states that have made similar arguments about consumer protections, that their practices are deceiving the consumers of each state and or the respective states.

I don't believe those lawsuits have been successful in terms of bringing about corporate change for any of these companies, however, it is raising the issues that, you know, we're having discussions like this today.

To a broader audience, parents are becoming aware.

But Platkin says he wants New Jersey's children held to the same safety standards as those around the world.

We've identified significant harms to the residents of this state.

We've also identified that TikTok knows about these harms.

Other parts of the world has taken meaningful steps to prevent those harms affecting children, so we want them to stop their abusive practices and stop harming our residents.

Harms that, data shows, can include sleeplessness, anxiety, depression, eating disorders, even suicide.

In Newark and Joanna Gagis, NJ Spotlight news.