If you're a parent of an older child or teenager, you'll most likely have faced questions from your son or daughter about downloading TikTok.
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The video-sharing app was first released in 2016 and features a variety of short-form videos created by its users – that's anything from dances to pranks, stunts, jokes, and general entertainment clips.
What's the problem, you may think? Well, many parents worry that either their child is using the app when they are underage, or that they are watching unsuitable material for their age. Keeping track of what your child or teen is watching on their device can be really tough.
HELLO! spoke to TikTok's Director of Safety Public Policy for Europe, Alexandra Evans, for her advice on keeping our kids safe on the app.
Tips for staying safe on TikTok
HELLO!: Hi Alexandra, can you tell us what the age restriction is on TikTok?
Alexandra: To have a TikTok account, you need to be 13 or older, and once a child hits 13, the final decision about when and how a teen uses TikTok tends to be made collectively between parents and teens.
Our job is to make sure that, whenever a teen joins our community, we have tools and policies in place to ensure they have a safe and positive experience.
HELLO!: What are your tips for monitoring your teen's TikTok account?
Alexandra: Our Family Pairing feature lets parents set the parameters of how their teen uses TikTok, including how long they spend on TikTok each day.
But my number one tip is that talking is critical. If your teen feels they can turn to you if they encounter a problem online that's hugely important for their wellbeing and safety online.
We know that it can be quite overwhelming for parents to keep up with evolving trends or talk with their teens about online safety. So, to help with this, we spoke to teens about the insight and advice that they would value from adults in their life when it comes to supporting them online.
The tips are available on the Guardian's Guide section of our Safety Centre, as well as our Family Pairing feature. They include:
- Help me understand the rules
- Be available to chat
- Don't panic when things go wrong
- Trust me
- Respect my privacy
HELLO!: What should a teen do if they are bullied on TikTok or if they are the victim of social media trolls?
Alexandra: Bullying and harassment have absolutely no place on TikTok, as is set out in our Community Guidelines, and we will remove any content that violates these rules.
If a teen is being bullied, then in the first instance, we'd recommend that they'd report the account so that our team can investigate. We want teens to feel safe on the platform and ensure that parents have peace of mind too, so we have a number of features aimed at combatting bullying and harassment.
More broadly, we've introduced a feature so that our community can restrict who comments on their videos, with under-16s only able to receive comments from friends. We've also added the ability to delete multiple comments at once or report them, and accounts that post bullying or other negative comments can be blocked in bulk.
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HELLO!: Parents worry about their teens talking to adults they don't know on social media - how can we prevent this?
Alexandra: As a parent, I understand how worrying this can be, and we want to give parents peace of mind. We've ensured that under 16s cannot send or receive direct messages; all accounts aged 13 to 15 are set to private by default; and our Family Pairing feature lets parents and guardians control settings such as search and direct messaging for 16 to 17-year-olds.
Further to that, direct messaging is default off for 16 to 17 years and, irrespective of age, users can't send messages to someone unless that person has actively chosen to follow them. All users can also restrict who comments on their videos.
HELLO!: There is the worry of a teen 'liking' or rewatching an unsuitable video and then seeing more of that topic on their 'For You' page - how can prevent this?
Alexandra: What I personally love about TikTok is that it's a place where people come to find things that inspire their creativity and find videos they love. It's important to us that users enjoy the diversity our platform has to offer, and we want to make sure the discovery experience reflects that.
That's why we're testing ways to avoid recommending a series of similar content to protect against viewing too much of a content category that may be fine as a single video but problematic if viewed in clusters.
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