ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Minnesota on Tuesday joined a wave of states suing TikTok, alleging the social media giant preys on young people with addictive algorithms that trap them into becoming compulsive consumers of its short videos.
“This isn’t about free speech. I’m sure they’re gonna holler that," Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said at a news conference. "It’s actually about deception, manipulation, misrepresentation. This is about a company knowing the dangers, and the dangerous effects of its product, but making and taking no steps to mitigate those harms or inform users of the risks.”
The lawsuit, filed in state court, alleges that TikTok is violating Minnesota laws against deceptive trade practices and consumer fraud. It follows a flurry of lawsuits filed by more than a dozen states last year alleging the popular short-form video app is designed to be addictive to kids and harms their mental health. Minnesota's case brings the total to about 24 states, Ellison's office said.
Many of the earlier lawsuits stemmed from a nationwide investigation into TikTok launched in 2022 by a bipartisan coalition of attorneys general from 14 states into the effects of TikTok on young users’ mental health. Ellison, a Democrat, said Minnesota waited while it did its own investigation.
Sean Padden, a middle-school health teacher in the Roseville Area school district, joined Ellison, saying he has witnessed a correlation between increased TikTok use and an “irrefutable spike in student mental health issues,” including depression, anxiety, anger, lowered self-esteem and a decrease in attention spans as they seek out the quick gratification that its short videos offer.
The lawsuit comes while President Donald Trump is still trying to broker a deal to bring the social media platform, which is owned by China’s ByteDance, under American ownership over concerns about the data security of its 170 million American users. While Trump campaigned on banning TikTok, he also gained more than 15 million followers on the platform since he started sharing videos on it.
No matter who ultimately owns TikTok, Ellison said, it must comply with the law.
TikTok disputed Minnesota's allegations.
“This lawsuit is based on misleading and inaccurate claims that fail to recognize the robust safety measures TikTok has voluntarily implemented to support the well-being of our community," company spokesperson Nathaniel Brown said in a statement. "Teen accounts on TikTok come with 50+ features and settings designed to help young people safely express themselves, discover and learn.
"Through our Family Pairing tool, parents can view or customize 20+ content and privacy settings, including screen time, content filters, and our time away feature to pause a teen’s access to our app,” Brown added.
Minnesota is seeking a declaration that TikTok's practices are deceptive, unfair or unconscionable under state law, a permanent injunction against those practices, and up to $25,000 for each instance in which a Minnesota child has accessed TikTok. Ellison wouldn't put a total on that but said, “it's a lot.” He estimated that “hundreds of thousands of Minnesota kids” have TikTok on their devices.
“We’re not trying to shut them down, but we are insisting that they clean up their act,” Ellison said. “There are legitimate uses of products like TikTok. But like all things, they have to be used properly and safely.”
Minnesota is also among dozens of U.S. states that have sued Meta Platforms for allegedly building features into Instagram and Facebook that addict people. The messaging service Snapchat and the gaming platform Roblox are also facing lawsuits by some other states alleging harm to kids.
FILE - The TikTok logo is seen on a mobile phone in front of a computer screen which displays the TikTok home screen, Oct. 14, 2022, in Boston. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — Ten years ago, Kim Gordon — a revolutionary force in the alternative rock band Sonic Youth, the ’80s New York no wave scene and the space between art and noise — debuted solo music. At the time, she was already decades into a celebrated, mixed-medium creative career.
The midtempo “Murdered Out” was her first single, where clangorous, overdubbed guitars met the unmistakable rasp of her deadpan intonations. It was a surprise from an experimentalist well-versed in the unexpected: The song took inspiration from Los Angeles car culture, and its main collaborator was the producer Justin Raisen, then best known for his pop work with Sky Ferreira and Charli XCX. Their partnership has continued in the decade since, and on March 13, Gordon will drop her third solo album, “Play Me,” announced Wednesday alongside the release of a hazy, transcendent single, “Not Today.”
“It was a happy accident,” she says of her continued work with Raisen. “In the beginning, I was somewhat skeptical of working with a producer and collaborator, really. But it’s turned out to be incredibly freeing.”
“Play Me” follows Gordon's critically lauded, beat-heavy 2024 album “The Collective,” a noisy body of work that featured oddball trap blasts. It earned her two Grammy nominations — a career first — for alternative music album and alternative music performance. Those were for the song “Bye Bye,” with its eerie, dissonant beat originally written for rapper Playboi Carti. For “Play Me,” Gordon reimagined the track for the closer, “Bye Bye 25!” She says it was the result of her thinking about the rap world, where revisiting and remixing is commonplace.
“I came up with the idea of using these words that Trump had sort of ‘banned’ in his mind,” she says of the new song's lyrics. (An example: “Injustice / Opportunity / Dietary guidelines / Housing for the future.” President Donald Trump’s administration associates the terms with diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, which it has vowed to root out across the government.) For Gordon, because it became “more conceptual … the remake doesn’t seem as anxiety-provoking as the original.”
There is a connective spirit between “The Collective” and “Play Me” — a shared confrontation, propulsive production and songs that possess a keen ability to process and reflect the world around Gordon. “It does feel kind of like an evolution,” she says of this album next to her last. “It’s sort of a more focused record, and immediate.” The songs are shorter and attentive.
Or, to put it more simply: “I like beats and that inspires me more than melodies,” she says. “Beats and space.”
That palette drives “Play Me,” a foundation in which staccato lyricism transforms and offers astute criticism. Consider the title track, which challenges passive listening and the devaluation of music in the age of streaming. She names Spotify playlist titles, imagined genres defined by mood rather than music. “Rich popular girl / Villain mode” she speak-sings, “Jazz and background / Chillin' after work.”
“It's just representative of, you know, this era we're in, this culture of convenience,” she says. “Music always represented a certain amount of freedom to me, and it feels like that’s kind of been blanketed over.”
Sonically, it is a message delivered atop a '70s groove, placing it in conversation with an era unshackled from these digital technologies.
The title, too, “is playing off the sort of passive nature of listening to music,” she says, “But also it could be seen as defiant. Like, I dare you to play me.”
There's also the blown-out “Subcon,” which examines the world's growing billionaire class and their fascination with space colonialization in a period of economic insecurity. In the song, Gordon's lyrical abstractions highlight the absurdity, taking aim at technocrats.
“I find reality inspirational, no matter how bad it is,” she says. Where some artists might veer away from the news, Gordon tackles truth. “I’m not sure what music is supposed to be. So, I’m just doing my version of it.”
In the end, she hopes listeners are “somewhat thrilled by” the album.
“'This is the music that I’ve wanted to hear,’ kind of feeling. Does that sound egotistical? I don’t know,” she laughs. If it is, it is earned.
1. “Play Me”
2. “Girl with a Look”
3. “No Hands”
4. “Black Out”
5. “Dirty Tech”
6. “Not Today”
7. “Busy Bee”
8. “Square Jaw”
9. “Subcon”
10. “Post Empire”
11. “Nail Bitter”
12. “Bye Bye 25!”
Kim Gordon poses for a portrait in New York on Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2025. (Photo by Taylor Jewell/Invision/AP)
Kim Gordon poses for a portrait in New York on Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2025. (Photo by Taylor Jewell/Invision/AP)
Kim Gordon poses for a portrait on Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2025, in New York (Photo by Taylor Jewell/Invision/AP)
