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.
