Sexual Predators, Dangerous Challenges and Un-censored Content: How TikTok continues to fail its under-age community
With yet another traumatizing video circulating TikTok, it is time to seriously question how far the app is protecting its young user base — and why adults should consider restricting their children’s use of the app.
Overnight, TikTok has been battling to remove the video of a bearded man committing suicide, first live-streamed on Facebook. With individuals now embedding the clip within other videos, many users are accidentally coming across this content, including the near-40% of TikTok’s user base that is under the age of 14.
Arguably, this video is just another of many disturbing events that TikTok has seen. Just this week, a teenager has died by overdosing on Benadryl, and users have been posing as Holocaust victims. More generally, many young users of TikTok enjoy sharing videos of themselves dressed up and lip-syncing in a manner easily sexualized by predators, which TikTok has had a difficult time controlling. Since its popularisation, the app has battled concerns from the parents of its primarily-young user base.
Whilst TikTok’s policy prevents under-13s from using the app, the efficacy of this policy is questionable — as it is on similar social sites. Many young children are aware that they…
