TikTok faces legal charges
TikTok has an agreement with the FTC to better protect children using the app and according to a group of twenty advocacy groups, they say they aren’t living up to their agreement.
There are a number of alleged problems reported including a problem with TikTok verifying user’s ages.
The app is “ensnaring perhaps millions of underage children in its marketing apparatus, and putting children at risk of sexual predation,” Josh Grolin, the Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood’s executive director, told the New York Times. “Now, even after being caught red-handed by the FTC, TikTok continues to flout the law.”
There was even a problem recently with the Kardashian family. Kourtney Kardashian and Scott Disick’s oldest son, Mason Disick (10-years-old), made an account without his parents’ knowledge. The account was brought to his parents’ attention when he did a live stream on TikTok and he was telling family secrets to people on the live.
TikTok states that users must be 13-years-old and older in order to use the app.
A year ago, regulators gave TikTok a $5.7 million fine for violating the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. TikTok has said they would delete videos from any users that they knew were younger than 13 and also delete any videos from users whose ages were unknown to the app.
TikTok is one of the most popular apps in the world and has almost 800 million monthly users. Millions of new users downloaded the app during the worldwide Covid-19 lockdown.
Not only is TikTok very popular with the younger generations but it has also grown to be very popular with older generations. From college kids to grandparents, the ages on the app are very broad. Since the Covid-19 lockdown, TikTok has seen more and more users from older generations.
