Congruent with Adolescent Mind Day SpaTikTok announced yesterday that it is implementing new features with the aim of promoting the safety of teenagers and their families.
The platform is, to date, the most used among minors of 18 years of age, with an average time of 107 minutes a day, according to the report from Alpha to Z: raising the digital generations by Qustodio, the leading family security company. . With the preferred social network for children in 2022 and taking into account that, according to the study, time and use of mobile devices, they cause debates in the middle of the homes surveyed, the platform wanted to impose a remedy and contribute to its improvement. – to be between young people and their parents. Thus, all user accounts under the age of eighteen will automatically have a limit of 60 minutes per day on screen.
TikTok shares the research conducted by the Internetmatters.org platform, and the same social network is supported to verify its decision. According to the study, “the lack of control over screen time is not just a teenage problem; parents have also acknowledged that they feel they use their phones too much.” Research confirms that the majority of young people want to take responsibility for their time online without parental help and that it is common for young people to feel a lack of control over their online behavior and behavior.
One more step towards digital well-being among young people
The social network itself admits that, although there is no clear consensus on how “adequate” this link is, it has been defined by consulting different academic research and experts from the Digital Wellness Lab at Boston Children’s Hospital. With the implementation of this measure, adolescents will have to access the code in order to consume the content within the set limit of one hour.
From social networks they confirm that this function “force” [a los adolescentes] to extend the active policy at that time [de visualización]”, although users disable it. And if they do and spend more than 100 minutes in the app, explains Cormac Keenan, director of TikTok’s trust and safety, the user will be asked to set a custom daily time limit. In addition, another measure is being built that next year will encourage young people to organize their time in front of the screen and achieve great results. “According to the conclusions, this approach has contributed to a 234% increase in the use of media-driven time”, they declare from the social network.
This new functionality is added to many other advanced features of TikTok to ensure safe use of the platform among the smallest. The social network measures by default the private accounts of young people between 13 and 15 years old, direct messages are available only to those over 16 years of age and live videos are only available to those who are at least 18 years old. “We’re expanding our Screens Time management tool with more personalization options, introducing new settings for teen accounts, and expanding the Family Sync program with more parental controls,” said Keenan.
In this sense, the security and trust director of TikTok shares a series of updates to the Family Synchronization system, which allows parents or guardians to connect their TikTok account with their teenage son or daughter and set up controls. Parents will be able to mute notifications at set times, view summaries of app usage, the number of times TikTok is open, and a breakdown of total time spent during the day and night, and set custom limits.
