TikTok Introduces Enhanced Safeguards for Young Users in the EU

If you’re looking to understand the extent of the difficulty in accurately determining user ages on social platforms, an issue the Australian government is aiming to address through legislation, this statistic from TikTok might provide some insight:

“Every month, we remove around 6 million accounts globally because we believe that our minimum age requirement has not been met.”

This relies on TikTok’s newest machine-learning-driven identification and detection methods, which are probably only catching a fraction of the younger users trying to bypass the platform’s age restrictions.

The statement forms part of TikTok’s latest update regarding user safety in Europe, focusing on the steps the platform is taking to safeguard young users in the EU from potential harm.

TikTok reports having 175 million users in the EU overall, with a notable portion of young teens attempting to access the app, along with users facing mental health challenges.

To address this, TikTok is introducing a series of updates to provide support, including:

Partnering with NGOs across Europe to roll out a new in-app integration that’ll connect people who report potentially harmful or distressing content directly with mental health support and resources

Restricting the use of certain appearance-altering effects for teens under 18

Moving to the next stage of its EU data separation project (Project Clover) to ensure EU user data remains in the region

The most noteworthy update is the modification to image-altering effects, which comes after a recent report examining how teens interact with social apps.

According to the report:

“When it came to filters and effects, teens and parents were concerned that beauty filters could be especially compelling for girls who were under greater pressure to compare themselves with each other and to live up to idealized beauty standards […] Many teens thought that filter labels should be compulsory rather than optional. There were further suggestions around restricting the use of filters to older teens, removing filters related to subtly changing one’s appearance altogether, and creating greater friction to dissuade users from applying filters.”

As a result, TikTok is now limiting the use of such filters, which could help lessen harmful comparisons within the app.

This issue is also tied to young teens who are constantly trying to gain access to the platform.

This has been an ongoing challenge for TikTok, with previous internal reports indicating that a third of the app’s U.S. users might be under 14 years old.

For clarity, the minimum age to create a TikTok account is 13. However, as mentioned, the Australian government is now looking to pass a law that would prevent users under 16 from having social media accounts. Other regions are also exploring similar ideas.

Based on TikTok’s statistics, it’s evident that many young users are attempting to access the app, a situation that could now be subject to enforcement and monetary penalties in Australia, at least.

Six million accounts per month on a single platform is a significant number, and it’s unclear how Australian authorities will manage to detect and enforce this moving forward.

However, TikTok, like other platforms, is working on improving its detection methods in this area.

Will this be sufficient to meet the new regulations? We’ll have to wait and see.

Source: Social Media Today

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