Pennsylvania Attorney General Dave Sunday filed a lawsuit against Snap Inc. this week, accusing the company of deceiving app stores about the prevalence of adult-themed content on Snapchat to preserve a 13-and-older age rating. Sunday, a Republican, announced the action at a press conference Tuesday in Philadelphia.
The complaint alleges Snap knowingly misrepresents how often drug use, sexual content and other adult material appears on the platform. By keeping the app rated 13-plus in major app stores, Sunday argues, the company gains access to children whose parents may believe the platform is appropriate for them.
"Once they have you signed up and logged in, you are officially in their clutches," Sunday said at Tuesday's press conference. "From there, Snapchat essentially says good luck getting out."
The suit targets specific product features Sunday says are engineered to trap young users. Chief among them is Snap Streak, which counts consecutive days two users exchange messages. A streak disappears if one party fails to send a message within 24 hours. "We allege this streak feature puts a tangible value on friendships and influences a child's feelings of self-worth," Sunday said.
Sunday also targeted Snapchat's disappearing-content design—the feature that automatically deletes photos, videos and messages after they are viewed. The AG argued that the ephemeral format encourages users, including minors, to send material they would otherwise decline to share, including revealing photographs.
The legal theory rests on Pennsylvania's consumer protection laws. Sunday demanded in the complaint that Snap disclose the addictive nature of its platform and take concrete steps to limit compulsive use among young users. He described the end goal as a full overhaul of how the company markets and advertises Snapchat.
Snap disputed the lawsuit's characterization of the platform. A company spokesperson said the allegations "misrepresent the platform and its approach to teen safety." The spokesperson added that Snapchat was built differently from competing platforms—it opens to a camera rather than an algorithmic content feed and was designed to support direct communication between friends rather than broadcast content. "We share the Attorney General's commitment to protecting young people online and are disappointed they have chosen litigation rather than working with us toward that shared goal," the spokesperson said.
Sunday acknowledged the challenge parents face in evaluating every social media application their children use. He argued that because parents lack the time to investigate each platform in depth, they depend on companies to be transparent about what their products do. The suit frames Snap's alleged deception about content ratings as a direct harm to families who trusted the app-store system to flag inappropriate platforms.
The Snapchat case is Sunday's second major lawsuit against a social media company in recent weeks. He filed a separate complaint against TikTok over comparable allegations involving addictive design and failure to protect minors. The two actions together represent a coordinated push by the Pennsylvania AG's office against the largest platforms frequented by teenagers.
The lawsuits place Sunday inside a growing wave of state-level enforcement against social media companies on child safety grounds. Attorneys general in multiple states have filed similar actions against Meta, ByteDance and others over the past two years, arguing that federal law has not moved fast enough to protect minors online. Sunday's approach—targeting consumer protection statutes rather than seeking new legislation—lets him proceed without waiting for the state legislature to act.
