TikTok Releases New Parents Guide To Further Safeguard Youngsters On The App

TikTok has collaborated with the National PTA to create a new TikTok Guide for Parents, which gives important information to help parents secure their children while they use the app and describes the many procedures and resources TikTok has prepared to protect children from online abuse and predators.

The 20-page guide explains every facet of TikTok's operation, allowing parents to better comprehend the important features.

As seen here, the guide covers every one of TikTok's different protection features, such as comment filtering and account privacy settings.

It also provides a summary of TikTok's Family Pairing function, which allows parents to monitor what their children are doing in the app, as well as information on virtual gifting, which is not available to users under the age of 18.

The guide also includes a checklist of privacy and safety elements for parents to examine to implement additional safeguards.

Moreover, TikTok is theoretically not available to those under the age of 13 in its complete form, as the guide also states:

"The full TikTok experience is for people 13 and over, and along with an age-gate, we’ve given the app a 12+ App Store rating so that you can enable device-level restrictions on your teen’s phone."

TikTok has a 'younger users' edition for individuals under the age of 13, which contains additional privacy and safety safeguards. However, technically, children should not be able to use the app's full functionality.

It's difficult to determine whether this is preventing children from receiving the full TikTok experience because there are methods around these limits, but with internal TikTok data revealing that one-third of all TikTok users in the US are under the age of 14, it's a serious problem. As a result, it's critical for parents to learn as much as they could about the app, and as it grows in popularity and momentum, more kids are flocking to it to see what their friends are sharing, what their favorite creators are releasing, and so on.

Considering this, it may be worthwhile for parents to download the new guide and read through the different advice and remarks. Since even if you don't believe your child is at risk, they could be, and they could be using TikTok without you knowing.

TikTok has been scrutinized in several countries for potential content concerns and exposing youngsters to potentially hazardous content.

The European Commission is presently investigating the app due to fears that it exposes underage users to unsuitable content, and it has also been temporarily banned in both Italy and Pakistan due to similar concerns.

Then there are the hazards of bullying and abuse, as well as the long-term consequences of such comments.

Even TikTok's most prominent user has expressed concern about this, with Charli D'Amelio stating earlier this year that she'd 'lost her enthusiasm' for the platform due to the relentless barrage of negative remarks on her videos.

TikTok is striving to deal with these issues and has added more content restrictions and control tools. Nonetheless, it is critical for parents to grasp the risks and to seek to educate their children on them wherever possible.

As a result, this could be a useful guidebook to bookmark.

The TikTok/PTA parents guide is available for download here.