Tiktok’s new measures to protect children

TikTok is taking over social media. You can see videos popping up on all possible online platforms. Even on Instagram and Facebook, you can find tons of compilations of funny TikToks. The app has become extremely popular, especially with youngsters. Although the elderly are starting to find their way to the platform. TikTok offers so many creative options. The platform is full of videos about cooking, dancing, sports, people telling stories, and much more. It all seems so innocent, but we can’t forget it is still social media, which means we’re always giving up a piece of our privacy.

Grooming

Research from the BBC-News shows that grooming is a growing problem on TikTok. The platform has more than 689 million monthly active users; most of them are youngsters. A lot of them are posting videos without realizing the risks hidden behind them. Until recently, all profiles were automatically visible for everybody unless you had changed your privacy settings yourself. That means everyone could see your videos, and that is how abusers take advantage of young children.

Online challenges

Challenge another fun thing to do that can quickly escalate in doing a dangerous thing. For example, a couple of years ago, there was the ‘Kylie Jenner challenge’. A challenge does make your lips bigger. In the beginning, it seemed fun to do, your lips would get bigger and people laughed about how funny it looked.  Kids were doing it at home or school and were sharing photos of the result. A lot of dermatologic surgeons were warning people about the danger behind the challenge. It could cause significant pain, swelling, and potential permanent disfigurement. This is just one example of the many.

New challenges are popping up on TikTok, and in January is led to a horrible accident. A ten-year-old girl died after allegedly taking part in a ‘blackout challenge.” There is still an investigation going on, but we can’t ignore the danger of TikTok. First of all, how is it possible that a 10-year-old has an account on TikTok went you have to be 13 to register? Is TikTok doing enough to protect children?

warnings about Tiktok

After the death of the 10 -year-old girl the Italian Data Protection Authority imposed the immediate temporary block on access to data for Tiktok users whose age could not be verified. This at least until February the 15th. Tiktok is getting a lot of comments online that the app is not safe. Twitter has been blowing up with people warning each other not to let their kids join Tiktok. TikTok’s spokesman said the following thing: “The safety of the TikTok community is our absolute priority, for this motive we do not allow any content that encourages, promotes or glorifies behaviour that could be dangerous.” TikTok has also reacted to all the comments by taking new measures:

Changes for user younger than 16:

1. Their accounts are automatically set on private, but they have the options to change it themselves

2. Their videos can no longer be downloaded

3. They can no longer use the function Stich and Duet

4. Interaction is only possible with their followers

5. Their videos will not be suggested to other users, but they can disable this restriction themselves

Changes for users younger than 18:

1. They can only do a duet with friends unless they change their settings

2. Their videos are no longer available for download, but they can also disable this restriction themselves

Tiktok is taking a lot of measures to protect the youngsters from the dangers of social media. It hopes that these measures ensure that their young users can explore their creativity in a safe environment. At least, that is what it seems like. We can ask ourselves a lot of questions about these measures. Most of the restrictions can be disabled by the users themselves. A lot of young users hope to go viral and to become famous on Tiktok. It seems unlikely that they would put their profiles on private. We can ask ourselves the question, is Tiktok only doing this to give parents a feeling of safety. Whether the measures will have an impact is hard to say. And one of the biggest questions remains: what will TikTok do to make sure no kids under the age of 13 will join their platform?