TikTok is hoping to calm the storms around child safety on its platform with new tools to control usage.
The latest features include a reminder for teens to stop using the app at night as well as updates to its parental controls.
However, will they be enough to halt the tide of concerns about children’s safety on TikTok? The company is facing scrutiny in the UK for its use of children’s personal information; and lawsuits in both France and the US. These are as well as the looming cloud over its future stateside.
Setting Boundaries on TikTok
TikTok has published a blog entitled: “New ways we’re supporting parents and helping teens build balanced digital habits”. In it, head of ops, Adam Presser, says that the updates add to “the strongest safeguards” that the company already puts in place “by default” for its teen accounts.
The key update is to the Family Pairing option, which launched five years ago. Now parents will be able to block their children from being able to access TikTok at certain times of the day. They can also set these times as a recurring schedule.
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Another update gives parents more transparency. They will be able to see who their teen is following, who follows them and also if their child has blocked any accounts.
TikTok adds that it is also re-enabling the STEM feed of tailored content in all accounts – including those in which the teen has turned it off.
Calming Impact for Younger Users
For under-16s, TikTok has also announced a “wind down feature”. This kicks in after 10pm if the teen is still scrolling. It explains that this will be “a full-screen takeover with calming music to help teens relax and be mindful of the time”. The calming music might soon also be joined by meditation exercises, the company adds.
If the teen decides to ignore and keep scrolling, a second full-screen prompt will appear. TikTok says this is “harder to dismiss” but can be dismissed. As a result, some are already questioning how impactful it will be. However, TikTok says its confident of an impact. “In countries where this has already been piloted, the vast majority of teens decide to keep this reminder on”, it writes.
Too Little, Too Late?
These new announcements come just months after TikTok announced plans to block beauty filters for teenage users.
The company has launched a crackdown too on underage users, announcing that children under 13 years old will be booted off the platform. In Europe, it has teamed up with telecoms giant, Telefónica, for a new API called “Age Verification”. This uses AI “to understand how people can use age information from their phone provider to confirm their age.”
However, with lawsuits focused on the mental health impact of usage – especially how addictive the platform is for children – these latest announcements seem pretty feeble. Not least because TikTok knows exactly how addicted children can become – it has researched it.
On top of this, research seems to suggest that the company’s age verification tools are simply not working. In January, Psypost reported that 68.2% of under-13 users reported using TikTok. With statistics like this, it seems meditation exercises and calming music aren’t going to solve the problems.
