Nearly 100 million Americans use TikTok, a popular app for sharing short-form videos, every day, but Pennsylvania joined a growing number of states questioning the platform's protections for young users.

"Today is an action rooted, very simply, in protecting children," said state Attorney General Dave Sunday in a Tuesday press conference. "Social media allows us to be closer than ever to celebrities, athletes and musicians that we like. However, as easy as a child can watch (Dwayne) 'The Rock' (Johnson) make breakfast or hang out with his kids, they can see someone drinking alcohol or consuming drugs. And that is what is often glorified."

Sunday alleges that TikTok "misrepresents its app as age appropriate for teens as young as 13," even though content can include profanity, drinking, drug use and sexually suggestive situations.

"To achieve a 13-plus age rating in app stores, TikTok claims mature content is infrequent on their apps. Our investigation reveals that this could not be further from the truth," said Sunday. "That age rating gives parents the illusion of safety, but actually opens the door to putting content literally in the palm of our kids' hands whenever they want it."

This mismatch violates Pennsylvania Consumer Protection Law, he continued.

Additionally, the app is "intentionally designed ... to be addictive to young people," Sunday said, in a way "that can deteriorate and decay a child's mental wellness."

"They want users to endlessly scroll while they rake in astronomical ad revenue," he added. "When TikTok is constantly, infinitely in our kids' viewstreams ... we see TikTok as inhibitors of healthy adolescent development."

According to the lawsuit, filed in the Court of Common Pleas for Allegheny County, "addiction is TikTok's business model."

"TikTok employs a number of harmful addictive-by-design features specifically targeted and tailored to exploit, manipulate and capitalize on the developing brains of young users," the filing read. "Rather than disclosing its platform's harms and potential harms to young users or their parents, TikTok misleads the public about the ways its platform has harmed -- and is continuing to harm -- children and teens."

Sunday pointed to a teenTALK spring campaign that included student roundtable discussions across the state to analyze teenage relationships with social media. He described hearing about concerns with the enormously popular app, which an estimated 20% of American teenagers use "almost constantly."