TikTok announced a new set of changes to safety and privacy settings for teens on Thursday to further their goal of making young people using the social media platform safe.
TikTok tightens safety and privacy for teens
Earlier this year, Tiktok introduced a feature that will automatically set accounts of those under the age of 16 to private accounts and more than seven million users under the age of 13 have been removed in this year alone.
More measures include enabling parents to guide their teens through TikTok via the Family Pairing option, which has all the resources parents need to make sure their kids are safe on the platform. Google has recently made similar changes to its policies for minors, like allowing parents to limit their child’s screen time via the Family Link.
Direct Messaging is also not available for users under the age of 16. This is to ensure that young people do not get unwanted DMs from strangers or potential abusers or cyberbullies.
The new set of safety features
When people under the ages 16 to 17 join TikTok, their Direct Messages will be set to ‘No One’ by default, and for them to message anyone they will have to actively switch to a different sharing option. And accounts who have never used the DMs will receive a prompt asking them to review and confirm their privacy settings.
To help teens understand the sharing options available to them TikTok will now add a pop-up that appears when teens under the age of 16 are ready to publish their first video, asking them to choose who can watch the video. They will not be able to upload a video unless they have made a selection.
Because teens under 16 have their accounts set to private by default, they don’t have the option to have their videos to be seen by ‘Everyone’ — only friends and family can watch their videos. Also, the option to download videos of those under the age of 16 will be permanently disabled.
