TikTok, the go-to app for short-form mobile videos, is now equipped with enhanced privacy and browsing options for families by building on its existing Family Pairing features.
With the on-going pandemic, more families turn to internet platforms like TikTok to stay entertained, informed, and connected. Parents now have the option to manage their teen’s online experience by linking their TikTok accounts with their children’s and by turning the discoverability and safety controls on.
Specially developed for parents, this set of new features is intended to jumpstart the digital wellbeing and online safety education of families.
The new TikTok features include:
- Search: This allows parents to directly control whether a teen can search for content, users, hashtags, or sounds on the app.
- Comments: Parents may decide who can leave comments on a teen’s videos — either all users, friends only, or no one.
- Discoverability: This lets you regulate whether your teen’s account is private or public. With a private account, your teen can choose who can see their content. When the account is set to public, anyone can search for your teen’s profile, and view their content.
- Liked videos: Here, you decide who can view the videos your teen liked.
“Parenting a teen’s digital life can be daunting and many parents feel as though they’re playing catch-up when it comes to the latest technology and apps their teens use. Working with our community and industry partners, we are committed to helping facilitate important conversations within families about internet safety. Family Pairing was developed to help parents build upon their online safety education and define the experience that is best for their families,” according to Arjun Narayan, Director Trust & Safety, TikTok, Asia Pacific.
Family Pairing, the feature that allows a parent to link their TikTok account to their teen’s, already has features such as Screen Time Management, Restricted Mode, and Direct Message regulation to provide parents with insight and control over how their teens use TikTok.
Over the past year, TikTok has taken steps to improve and enhance its teams, policies, controls, and educational resources. Along with its tools for families, the platform continues to strengthen its youth safety and well-being policies. Just recently, TikTok added more guidelines and resources to support body positivity within the community, and remove harmful content such as hateful ideologies. Sending of images or videos in comments or messages is also not allowed on TikTok, because studies have linked the spread of child sexual abuse material to messaging on apps, especially those with encryption.
TikTok has developed global partnerships to protect against child exploitation and to remove such content, terminate accounts, and report cases to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and local law enforcement agencies. Protecting minors – online and offline – is highly important and requires collaboration between platforms, governments, and child safety organizations. This is why TikTok supports the implementation of the Voluntary Principles to Counter Online Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse, which offers a framework that can be consistently applied across sectors and services to respond to changing behaviors and protect young people.
For families who want to learn more about online safety, TikTok has created several resources, including its Youth Portal, Parents page, and educational safety videos. TikTok remains committed to the security of its community — especially the youth — and will continue to develop resources, tools, and policies as it aims for the highest level of safety.