- TikTok has introduced new safety features to protect children.
- TikTok is facing a series of state lawsuits that claim it’s harmful to children’s mental health.
- Child safety advocates say TikTok’s efforts are welcome but not enough to solve the problem.
TikTok’s algorithm is so masterful it’s difficult to look away. While that’s good for TikTok, it might not be so good for anyone else.
Mental health professionals have long warned about the dangers of social media in general, and TikTok in particular. TikTok is also now facing a series of lawsuits that say the app is dangerous to children’s mental health.
In response, TikTok has added features to encourage more responsible use of the app. But while child safety advocates welcome the effort, some of them say it’s not enough to solve the root problem.
TikTok announced its latest safety features this week. They give parents more control over — and insight into — what their kids watch. TikTok also now allows parents to set time limits.
“No teen or family is the same, and whether it’s during family time, school, at night, or a weekend away, caregivers can use our new Time Away feature to decide when it’s best for their teens to take a break,” TikTok said in its announcement.
TikTok expanded its family pairing function, which lets parents see who their kids are following on TikTok, who follows them, and what accounts their child has blocked. The feature will also soon let children choose to alert a parent when they report content they think violates TikTok’s rules.
Titania Jordan, the chief marketing officer of parental control app Bark and author of the book “Parental Control,” told Business Insider there is one problem with the new features: A kid can easily just turn them off.
“I was like, ‘Wow, maybe TikTok is really going to do something meaningful,’ and they didn’t,” Jordan said.
Last year, attorneys general from 14 different states sued TikTok, accusing the app of being harmful to children. The coordinated lawsuits resemble the strategy used to take down Big Tobacco and Purdue Pharma, putting TikTok in some unsavory company.
Jayne Conroy, an attorney at a firm that represents some 50 plaintiffs in a separate class-action lawsuit accusing social media platforms of harming children, previously told BI that the state investigations into TikTok showed it is designed to “relentlessly engage and exploit the adolescent brain.”
Ariana Hoet, the executive clinical director at the Kids Mental Health Foundation, said children who spend several hours a day on social media are at an increased risk for mental health conditions like anxiety and depression.
However, she said the impact social media has on children depends on how much time they spend scrolling online, what they look at, and with whom they engage.
“One of the things that we always recommend is making sure that the parents are involved,” Hoet said. “If you decide to give access to your child, you want to continue monitoring, you want to continue conversations, and then you want to teach them digital literacy.”
Hoet said it’s important for parents to monitor their children’s social media activity, especially given that children’s brains aren’t yet fully developed.
“Even as adults with fully formed brains, we have a hard time disengaging,” Hoet said. “Kids are never going to win. There’s no way that they’re going to beat out these algorithms that are created to keep them on there.”
TikTok has denied accusations that it is addictive to children, but has nonetheless added features like default screentime limits, family pairing, and default private accounts for children under 16.
TikTok has also added a “wind down” feature for teen accounts. After 10 p.m., a pop-up will encourage teens to log off for the night with “calming music.” The pop-ups are optional, however, and the teen can continue using TikTok after dismissing them. TikTok also says it will add “meditation exercises” to the wind-down prompts in the future.
Jordan told BI that the wind-down and meditation features seemed like surface-level fixes that do not address the root of the issue: that social media content is addictive to children.
“I don’t know what child or adult is going to opt into meditating within an app that succeeds at delivering the most viral, engaging content that’s personalized,” Jordan said. “What do I want to do? Do I want to meditate? Or do I want to keep consuming this addictive content?”
Who is responsible for a child’s mental health?
Omar Gudiño, the deputy clinical director and senior psychologist at the Child Mind Institute, said the parental controls are a step in the right direction.
“It’s a complex problem,” Gudiño said. “We also want to be thinking about what messages we are sending at a family level and what messages we are sending in schools, so there’s multiple points for interventions. There’s probably more that apps can be doing themselves.”
Hoet said the onus for protecting young social media users’ mental health typically falls on the parents.
“Right now, those burden falls on parents, and that’s unfair,” Hoet said. “We need the tech companies to be more responsible in their design, and we need them to be more responsible in sharing the data that shows how it’s impacting kids.”
Politicians also need to step up and create laws focused on protecting children’s mental health during the digital age, she said. “We are at a place where the technology developed fast and we’re catching up,” Hoet said.
Gudiño said tech companies designing social media apps with young audiences in mind could help.
“If apps could do more to think about what content kids are exposed to or how the app is set up to keep them on for longer, there might be more to be done to help bring the risk down,” he said.
Gudiño said designing apps that balance children’s mental health and social media’s quest for user engagement might seem “incompatible,” but the challenge presents an opportunity for tech companies and families to work toward a common goal.
“What’s the best for children’s development? How do we design content and set up families for success in a way that’s going to work for everyone?” Gudiño said.
