The EU has blamed TikTok for implementing an “addictive design” that could breach Europe’s new content rules.

In preliminary findings, the European Commission (EC) said that features such as infinite scroll, autoplay, push notifications and a highly personalised recommender system are designed to keep users on the platform for as long as possible in a way that could cause both physical and mental harm.

The EU’s Digital Services Act, which was introduced in 2022, does not directly ban social media companies from making their platforms addictive, but it does compel them to avoid “systemic risks”, including harm to minors, mental health impacts and disrupted sleep.

But the EC’s investigation has found that TikTok did not adequately assess how its features could harm the wellbeing of its users. 

“By constantly ‘rewarding’ users with new content, certain design features of TikTok fuel the urge to keep scrolling and shift the brain of users into autopilot mode,” it said. “Scientific research shows that this may lead to compulsive behaviour and reduce users’ self-control.”

The firm was also blamed for ignoring key metrics suggesting compulsive use of its app, including the amount of time that minors spend on TikTok at night and the frequency with which users open the app.

TikTok, which was first launched internationally in September 2017, quickly found a wide audience because of its widely lauded content algorithm that determines the interest of users to specific content through micro interactions. Everything from how long users linger on content – even for just a fraction of a second – whether content is being rewatched, whether the volume is changed, or whether the app is abandoned after a video is used to tailor the exact content shown in the feed.

This had led to a content creation ecosystem designed to take advantage of the algorithm as much as possible, aiming to hooks viewers in the first one to two seconds with fast pacing and clear, emotional beats.

The EC said that TikTok would probably need to change “the basic design of its service” by disabling key addictive features such as infinite scroll while implementing effective screen time breaks.

Henna Virkkunen, the EC’s executive vice-president for tech sovereignty, security and democracy, said: “Social media addiction can have detrimental effects on the developing minds of children and teens. The Digital Services Act makes platforms responsible for the effects they can have on their users. In Europe, we enforce our legislation to protect our children and our citizens online.”

In December, TikTok’s parent company ByteDance finally agreed to sell most of its US business to a group of investors including Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX after originally being ordered to do so under a ruling from Joe Biden’s administration in 2024. Since then, it has been accused of suppressing content critical of President Donald Trump by the governor of California, Gavin Newsom.