TikTok: Is it a suitable platform for children?

By Olivia Snaith-Cairns

TikTok has been around for a while now, but is it appropriate for children under the age of 13?

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TikTok is a popular social media platform which began in August 2018, and one which gathered momentum and build up many followers during the coronavirus pandemic.

This video-sharing platform allows its users to upload videos of dancing, lip-syncing and more. It’s transformed individuals into ‘celebs’ overnight with some videos gaining more than 30 million views and some accounts with over 100 million followers.

TikTok is not only an extremely popular platform, what makes it unique is that it is accessed by many different generations from young people to elderly people. It attracts more variety of ages than other platforms such as Facebook and Instagram.

This app being highly addictive to some people, suggesting dangerous viral ‘challenges’ and as well as other social media platforms, doesn’t stop cyber-bullying.

Photo Credit: Kelly Sikkema, via Unsplash

With just one click, children can easily access the platform.

Is the app age-appropriate?

Carlo Mardoian, a London-based chef, expressed that those young children that use the app can be exposed to life experiences that aren’t in their immediate future. “This makes them think they need to act a certain way and grow up too fast which would result in them acting out if they aren’t treated the same way as the other people on the app are.”

“I think TikTok should be allowed for 16+ year olds only. By allowing everyone on the app, it might open doors for older adults to take advantage of the younger account members,” explained Mardoian. “I don’t think that TikTok does enough to censor videos for younger children. Even though I’m 26 years of age, I still get shown some videos on my feed that shock me, and if I’m being shown this kind of content then I wonder what everyone younger than me is seeing.”

In a recent survey, 10 people were asked a range of questions. Out of these 10 people, 90% agreed that TikTok is not a suitable platform for children, and 90% also said that the platform is suitable for certain ages only. However, 100% said that TikTok do not do enough to censor certain videos. The results are shown below.

When asked if TikTok should do more to support a child’s wellbeing, many said that parent consent and age restricted sections would be best, including that ‘trends involving food/dieting needs harsher guidance due to how damaging mentally it can be on young people’, as said by an anonymous visitor.

Jessica Pace, 32, said: “It is difficult to supervise the content that children are exposed to. I believe it should be accessible to 16+ to prevent online grooming."

“It contains and displays adult content visible to anyone without restriction. It should show more educational content and give advice to important matters such as bullying," expressed Pace.

However, not everyone shares the same opinion. Paris White, 35, said that he thinks it is a ‘creative outlet that you can share with the world’ and does think that it can be suitable for all ages.

“TikTok would follow an algorithm based on what’s been searched for,” explained the father of 3. “If they searched for something that wasn’t normal of a child then I don’t believe there is enough to stop that from happening.”

Do you think that TikTok is doing enough to support a child’s wellbeing?

Photo Credit: Tim Gouw, via Unsplash