Furthering our safety and privacy commitments for teens on TikTok

People from all walks of life come to TikTok to be entertained, spark joy in their everyday, and share their creativity with others. Be it through viewing the latest book recommendations on #BookTok or showing off their new digs on #renovation, everyone can find their community on TikTok – and our goal is to foster a safe and welcoming platform for these vibrant, diverse communities. 

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TikTok offers a range of safety and privacy controls to empower people to make decisions about who they share their content with. They also believe it’s important to ensure even stronger proactive protections to help keep teenagers safe, and have continually introduced changes to support age-appropriate experiences on their platform. This includes making accounts belonging to those under the age of 16 private by default, reserving features like Direct Messaging to people 16 and older, and enabling parents to guide their teen’s TikTok presence with Family Pairing. 

Today they are introducing a new set of changes for users aged 13-17 to further enhance these proactive protections. These changes will continue rolling out to their users globally over the coming months.

New changes to Direct Messaging privacy settings

TikTok wants to help teens make active decisions about their privacy settings, so when someone aged 16-17 joins TikTok, their Direct Messaging setting will now be set to ‘No One’ by default. To message others, they will need to actively switch to a different sharing option. Existing accounts who have never used DMs before will receive a prompt asking them to review and confirm their privacy settings the next time they use this feature. These updates build on their current messaging protections, such as not allowing images or videos to be sent in messages and disabling messaging for accounts under age 16. 

Decide who can watch your videos

The process of making a TikTok is fun and creative – choosing music, picking effects, and getting the transitions right – but it is just as important to choose who that video will be shared with. To help teens understand the sharing options available to them, TikTok is now adding a pop-up that appears when teenagers under the age of 16 are ready to publish their first video, asking them to choose who can watch the video. They won’t be able to publish their video until they make a selection. 

With each video going forward, creators can decide who can watch before they post. Accounts aged 13-15 are set to private by default, and private accounts can choose to share their content with Followers or Friends, as the ‘Everyone’ setting is turned off. Duet and Stitch are also disabled for accounts under 16.

Choose who can download your public videos

TikTok is also providing additional context to help teens aged 16-17 understand how downloads work, so they can choose the option that’s most comfortable for them. If they opt to turn the feature on, they’ll now receive a pop-up asking them to confirm that choice before others can download their videos. Note that downloads are permanently disabled on content from accounts under the age of 16.  

A mindful approach to push notifications

TikTok prioritises and supports the well-being of their community members, with features like Screen Time Management that can be enabled both by account holders or by parents as part of Family Pairing. They want to help their younger users in particular develop positive digital habits early on, and they regularly consult with leading pediatric experts and youth well-being advocates to develop their Youth Portal, bullying prevention guide, and other features that support youth-well being. Now, they will be drawing upon this research to make changes that reduce the time period during which their younger teens can receive push notifications. Accounts aged 13-15 will not receive push notifications from 9pm, and accounts aged 16-17 will have push notifications disabled starting at 10pm.These changes continue to build on their ongoing commitments as there’s no finish line when it comes to protecting the safety, privacy, and well-being of their community. They are working with teens, community organisations, parents and creators to further innovate and they’re excited to share more over the coming months. To learn more about their efforts to support youth and families, you can read our Guardian’s Guide.