Earlier this year, Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford took an aggressive and important step to protect our kids from social media giants such as Meta, TikTok and Snapchat. He filed a lawsuit targeting these companies because they have deliberately hooked countless young kids onto their platforms, causing a range of dangerous behavioral and mental health problems. It’s the kind of action parents have been looking for, but Attorney General Ford should beware of how these predatory companies could gain even more power over our lives.

Facebook has 175 million users in the United States. TikTok has 150 million and Snapchat has 106 million. Teenagers report spending an average of 4.8 hours per day on social media. These billion-dollar corporations have a stranglehold on countless Americans’ time and attention, and that’s particularly true for young people.

That’s why the attorney general’s lawsuit is so important. These platforms will always try to get more users and more of our time. They are constantly seeking to expand their capabilities to capture our attention, and a recently filed lawsuit from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) would help them do that. If Ford decides to support the DOJ lawsuit, he would undermine all of his own good work to rein in social media platforms.

When the DOJ launched an antitrust lawsuit against Apple, I was intrigued and wanted to learn more. As I read about the case, it became clear that the DOJ thinks Apple uses different features of its devices and app store to limit competition. It’s a case the agency has been building for years, but many observers have found the agency’s long-awaited lawsuit surprisingly weak. The more I read about it, the more I tend to agree with criticisms of the DOJ’s case. 

Apple uses a set of rules and standards that all app developers have to meet before users can download their app from the app store. These rules are what allow most people to download apps without worrying about hackers or malware. Some of these rules mean that app developers can’t get as much data about us as they would like.

As any iPhone user has experienced, our iPhone gives us notifications before apps can access our photos, contacts or other private information. As you can imagine, social media companies such as Meta, TikTok and Snapchat don’t like the rules of the app store, which is why they recently sued Apple.

However, because the DOJ believes Apple uses those rules to limit competition, it’s trying to force the company to change the way it operates the app store. And if the government’s lawsuit is successful, it could open up our devices — and our lives — to dangerous companies such as TikTok. The massive social media companies would have fewer restrictions on the ways they can monitor us and use our data. The very platforms that Attorney General Ford is trying to rein in through his lawsuit would suddenly have even more power than they do already.

The last thing we should be doing right now is giving Meta, TikTok and Snapchat more freedom to capture our time and attention. When it comes to social media companies and their addictive platforms, kids and teenagers need more rules in place, not fewer. I wish the Department of Justice would focus on that problem instead of Apple and the standards it has in place for the app store. Young people aren’t depressed, anxious and stressed because of the app store; they’re suffering because giant social media platforms have taken over their lives.

Attorney General Ford’s attention is in the right place. He’s going after the companies that are causing real harm to our kids. I hope he doesn’t sign on to the DOJ’s misguided Apple lawsuit and help social media companies gain even more power over our lives.

Dinisha Mingo is the CEO of Mingo Health Solutions.

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