Protecting teens online

Millions of people around the world come to TikTok to create, share, discover and connect, and we’re committed to maintaining a safe, inclusive and authentic environment for our growing community. More than 40,000 safety professionals are dedicated to keeping TikTok safe.

We are committed to creating a safe platform for our community, and believe this work is especially important for our teenage members. People should be able to come to TikTok to express themselves creatively and be entertained in a safe and inclusive environment. Our comprehensive approach to teen safety includes zero-tolerance policies, innovative technologies, in-app features, and educational resources. We also work collaboratively with industry partners, non-profits, academics, and governments, to identify, implement, and share innovative solutions to better protect teens online.

Combating child exploitation and abuse

TikTok has a zero-tolerance approach to content that violates our youth safety policies, especially online child sexual exploitation and abuse (CSEA) and the sharing of child sexual abuse material (CSAM). Any content, including animation or digitally created or manipulated media, that depicts abuse, harm, exploitation, or endangerment of minors is a violation of our Community Guidelines and will be removed when detected.

To help identify CSAM, we use multiple technologies, including our own systems and hash-matching software like Microsoft’s PhotoDNA, Google’s Content Safety API, and YouTube’s CSAI Match. With our partners, we have built hash databases – hubs of unique digital codes that have been linked to known CSAM. This means that should someone attempt to upload CSAM to TikTok that matches a unique fingerprint from a database, or if we’ve identified new or suspected CSAM, that content will be removed, reported to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) and to relevant law enforcement authorities. The account that shared the content will also be permanently banned.

At TikTok, we believe that collaboration is critical to solving today’s most pressing challenges, including tackling CSAM. We work with leading youth safety organizations such as the Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI), Technology Coalition, NCMEC, Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), WePROTECT Global Alliance, and dedicated child safeguarding units in national and international law enforcement agencies. These partnerships provide opportunities to collaborate, learn and share best practices with our peers and to make critical progress toward our shared goal of ending online child sexual abuse.

Designing age-appropriate experiences

At TikTok, we build age-appropriate experiences and controls that enable teens to have a safe space to create, share, discover, and connect. We’re dedicated to partnering with families in this work as we share their interests in supporting teens as they start to explore the online world independently.

Promoting age-appropriate experiences

TikTok has a 12+ rating in the App Store and is listed as Parental Guidance Recommended in Google’s Play Store. These ratings mean parents can use device-level controls to block their child from downloading the app. Our neutral, industry-standard age-gate allows people to fill in their complete birthdate without any pre-populated minimum age. In the US, if someone enters a birthday that confirms they’re under 13, they’ll be directed into TikTok for Younger Users, a curated viewing experience with additional safeguards and privacy protections designed specifically for this audience.

Removing suspected underage accounts

While most people understand the importance of being truthful about their age, some do not provide the correct information, which is a challenge many online services face. This is one reason why our commitment to enforcing our minimum age requirements does not end at the age gate and we take a number of additional approaches to identify and remove suspected underage account holders. We use information, such as keywords and in-app reports from our community, to help detect potential underage accounts. Our safety team is also trained to identify accounts that may belong to an underage person. If we believe an account belongs to a person under the age of 13, we remove it and people are provided with an opportunity to appeal if they believe we have made a mistake.

Information regarding removals of suspected underage accounts is shared as part of our transparency reports.

Creating age-appropriate environments

At TikTok, we strive to provide an age-appropriate experience for teens that is considerate of their unique developmental needs. These are some of the deliberate decisions we’ve taken to protect younger members of the community:

We’re invested in protecting the well-being of people so that our community can stay in control of their experience. For everyone, regardless of age, we offer screen time management tools including:

• A screen time limit to help people decide how much time they’d like to spend on our app each day, with the option of having customizable limits depending on the day of the week.
• Scheduled screen time breaks to help remind people to take a break from the app after a period of uninterrupted screen time.
• An in-app screen time dashboard to give people insight into how much time they are spending on TikTok.
• People can opt for weekly notifications recapping their screen time.
• Community members can set a sleep reminder for themselves, which, when reached, will remind them that it’s time to log off.
• People can schedule specific periods of time where push notifications are muted on their device.
• In-app videos on TikTok encourage people to take a break from their phones and enjoy the world offline.

Family Pairing

We also aim to provide parents with resources they can use to have conversations about digital safety and decide the most comfortable experience for their family, including our Youth Portal, Guardian’s Guide to TikTok, our Privacy Center, and Family Pairing. Family Pairing lets parents and guardians link their TikTok account to their teens to enable a variety of content and privacy settings, including:

• Account privacy: Parents can set their teen’s account to private or public.
• Restricted Mode: Parents canlimit their teen’s exposure to content that may not be appropriate or suitable for them.
• Comments: Parents can restrict who can comment on their teen’s videos.
• Direct Messages: Parents can restrict who, if anyone, can send private messages to their teen’s account if their teen is 16 or over.
• Screen time Management: Parents can choose the amount of time their teens can be on TikTok each day, and get insights into their time spent through a screen time dashboard.
• Search settings: Parents can choose to restrict their teen’s ability to search for content.
• Push notifications: Parents can restrict push notifications to their teens during specific times.
• Keyword filters: Parents can add hashtags or keywords they would prefer their teen not see in their For You feed recommendations.
• Suggest Account: Parents can disable this setting to block their linked teens’ accounts from being suggested to others on the platform.
• Liked Videos: Parents can select who can view their linked teens’ liked videos.
• Turn on the STEM feed – In the US, parents can enable the feed featuring videos related to science, technology, engineering, and math on their teen’s account.

We encourage caregivers to discuss the Family Pairing features with their teens and explain why they choose to turn them on. Even without Family Pairing enabled, parents can help their teens enable our app’s Screen Time offerings, including Daily Screen Time and Restricted Mode, which are protected by a passcode set by the parent or guardian.

Further safeguarding the viewing experience

Recommendations safety

The goal of the For You feed is to provide original content that honors our mission of inspiring creativity and bringing joy. Our recommendation system is designed with user safety as a primary consideration, meaning that some content is not eligible for recommendation.We continually invest in tools that help people create the best TikTok experience for them. We offer a feature that lets people refresh their For You feed if their recommendations no longer feel relevant and our recommendation system will then begin to surface more content based on new interactions. People can also choose to automatically filter out videos that use specific hashtags or phrases from their For You feeds, and say “not interested” to skip future videos from a particular creator or that use a particular sound.

We continually invest in tools that help people create the best TikTok experience for them. We offer a feature that lets people refresh their For You feed if their recommendations no longer feel relevant and our recommendation system will then begin to surface more content based on new interactions.

People can also choose to automatically filter out videos that use specific hashtags or phrases from their For You feeds, and say “not interested” to skip future videos from a particular creator or that use a particular sound.

Content Levels

Our Content Levels system builds on these protections and is designed to prevent certain content with more mature or complex themes from reaching younger audiences. When we detect content that contains overtly mature or complex themes, for example, fictional scenes that may be too frightening or intense for younger audiences, a content level will be allocated to the video to help prevent those under 18 from viewing it across the TikTok experience.