much for starting off your weekend with us.

And explosive development involving a social media company.

Kentucky reporter helped uncover substantial internal concerns about TikTok is harms on underage use.

Earlier this week we reported that Kentuckyian more than a dozen other states are suing TikTok Kentucky attorney General Republican Russell Coleman said the popular short form video app was designed to be addictive to kids and that it harms their mental health.

Kentucky public radio State Capitol reporter Sylvia Goodman reviewed the lawsuit filed by the Kentucky Attorney General's office and copied and pasted excerpts of the redacted or blacked out contents.

What was revealed more than 30 pages of documents that had been shielded from view and part one of my interview with Sylvia, we talk about the internal communications that were uncovered that became foundational to the NPR story that was first broadcast this morning.

Sylvia Goodman with Kentucky Public Radio.

We appreciate a few minutes of your time on this explosive story that you lay the foundation for.

So we'll talk about perhaps your tech make a little later.

But I want to get to what we've learned this week about this major company.

I mean, what was revealed this week could really bring about substantial change in consequential change.

Yeah, 100%.

I mean, we're talking pages and pages of investigative materials that have been uncovered under these redactions.

>> And they show a lot of things that are think are going to really change how the court's view this case and are going to be really foundational for a lot of these attorney generals.

Attorneys general across the country in prosecuting.

So we have internal communications from TikTok and also their internal reviews or turtle studies as they try to determine as they, you know, look at the effects of their own technology of their own app.

>> Because they had correct me if I'm wrong, that they're there at did not cause some of the substantial amounts of both a mental health or emotional health harm that later has been revealed.

Is that correct?

>> Yeah.

So I think TikTok does acknowledge that there can be some bad effects of long-term use and they certainly acknowledge it in their internal documents.

But I think another important thing is that they said they have willingly put in place all of these safety measures that they limit you screen time or help them and are better understand their screen time.

All of that deal, for example, if you are a child, 2 scrolls on TikTok, you might after an hour notice that they have automatically put a they call it a limit.

But really just a nudge that tells you you've been on our and they say, look, we've done these things willingly to try and help kids manage their screen time better.

But internally, they acknowledge that use that do not have the self-control.

They don't have the development in order to self regulate themselves on social media and they also acknowledged internally that these limits, for example, that nudge are largely ineffective.

They said internally that we are willing to accept a small decrease in screen time.

But in their internal testing, they really even barely showed that amount that they need.

We acknowledged would be acceptable to them.

So, for example, we saw one said the internal study that the attorney general notes where it went from 108 minutes, a 108.5 minutes of screen time down to 107.

And so right.

Minimal effects of their own guardrails yet negligible effects of their own guardrails.

But also what is also more revealing and perhaps even disturbing is about the filters.

>> That can be used that can substantially impact how teens who are already an impressionable ages, where they're concerned about how they present to them to the world that these filters can also have some irreparable harm when it comes to showing them looking thinner or having fuller lips are bigger eyes.

Tell us about this.

>> Yeah.

So these beauty filters, they are not just on TikTok but TikTok as popular as a lot.

And they really think and some of the artificial intelligence technology behind them and they're very pervasive on the platform and an internal documents.

They acknowledge that they can have some negative effects, especially for young kids, were more impressionable in, you know, body image, body dysmorphia, all of these things.

And, you know, internal documents, employees recommended some safety measures on those filters that they chose not to implement.

So have many U.S. users are there of TikTok and how much of the percentage of that population would be teenagers?

>> I need to look at that number again, but I I believe it's 95% that we reported on right in the high numbers and they determined that of smartphone users, almost everyone in the U.S. are most teens are on these platforms and being subjected to all of these algorithms and and adds that TikTok is trying to beat them.

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