The TikTok logo is displayed on a mobile phone in front of a computer screen displaying the TikTok home screen, Oct. 14, 2022, in Boston. In a lawsuit filed Tuesday, April 9, 2024, two tribal nations accused social media companies — including Facebook and Instagram’s parent company Meta Platforms; Snapchat’s Snap Inc.; TikTok parent company ByteDance; and Alphabet, which owns YouTube and Google — of contributing to the disproportionately high rates of suicide among Native American youth.
But Native youth are particularly vulnerable to these companies’ addictive “profit-driven design choices,” given historic teen suicide rates and mental health issues across Indian Country, chairperson Lonna Jackson-Street of the Spirit Lake Tribe in North Dakota said in a press release. The Associated Press reached out to the companies for comment. Google said “the allegations in these complaints are simply not true.”
About 87 percent of people who identify as Native American don’t live on an Indian reservation, according to the 2020 US Census, and social media can help them connect with tradition, culture and other tribal communities.