Britain’s communications regulator Ofcom opened an investigation into TikTok on Thursday over the platform’s child safety measures. Officials said the probe will assess whether TikTok has complied with its legal obligations under the Online Safety Act 2023 to protect children from harmful content.
Ofcom’s investigation will focus on whether TikTok has met its legal duties under Section 12 of the Online Safety Act 2023, which requires online platforms to identify, manage and mitigate risks of harm to children. Officials said the probe will assess if TikTok has taken adequate steps to prevent children from encountering harmful content as far as reasonably practicable. The regulator is scrutinizing TikTok’s use of “age assurance” measures, including its reliance on “age inference” technology, which estimates user age based on behaviour such as videos watched and interactions rather than verified documents, according to Ofcom’s public statement.
A recent Ofcom report raised concerns about the effectiveness of TikTok’s age inference model, suggesting it may not reliably prevent younger children from accessing harmful material.
Ofcom has previously found that TikTok and other platforms largely depend on users self-declaring their age at sign-up, which can be easily circumvented by underage users entering false birthdates. The regulator requires social media companies to deploy “highly effective” age-check methods, and assessing whether TikTok’s current systems meet this standard forms a key part of the investigation.
Ofcom’s scrutiny follows its May 2023 review, which concluded that TikTok was “not safe enough” for children and called for stronger protections. Kate Davies, Ofcom’s group director for strategy and research, said the regulator had found age-check methods used by social media platforms “not working well enough,” specifically citing TikTok. A separate Ofcom report on video-sharing platforms noted that while TikTok, Snap and Twitch take steps to prevent children from encountering harmful videos, children still face risks. The report highlighted TikTok’s practice of labelling content as unsuitable for under-18s but warned that without robust access controls, children remain vulnerable to harmful material.
TikTok has responded by stating it is “confident that we meet our Online Safety Act obligations and will work with Ofcom to demonstrate it,” according to a company spokesperson. The platform maintains that its existing safety measures and systems for children are robust, a position reiterated following earlier Ofcom critiques. TikTok offers parental controls, including family-pairing tools that allow parents and carers to oversee children’s activity, features that Ofcom has identified in its transparency work on child safety. The company also accepted Ofcom’s findings in a separate enforcement case concerning inaccurate safety-data reporting and settled the case, which resulted in a reduced financial penalty.
That enforcement action began in December 2023, when Ofcom opened an investigation into whether TikTok had failed to comply with its duty to provide information following a formal request about parental-control features. Ofcom subsequently found TikTok had provided inaccurate information and delayed reporting, which disrupted publication of its child-safety transparency report. The regulator fined TikTok £1.875 million for these failings, with the penalty to be transferred to HM Treasury. Ofcom noted the fine included a 25% reduction because TikTok accepted the findings and settled the case, demonstrating the regulator’s willingness to impose formal sanctions.
The investigation comes amid wider UK government efforts to enhance online child safety. Last month, the government announced plans to ban under-16s from using a range of social media platforms, including TikTok, starting next year. The consultation on this ban is scheduled to conclude on May 26, with a formal government response expected in the summer. Ofcom’s ongoing evidence gathering and enforcement work are feeding into this policy process.
On March 12, 2026, Ofcom issued legally binding information requests to TikTok and other platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Roblox, Snapchat and YouTube, seeking details on their measures to protect children under the Online Safety Act. Parallel reports from Ofcom have highlighted that while TikTok, Snap and Twitch allow sign-ups from age 13 and use AI and moderation tools to enforce age restrictions, the effectiveness of these measures remains unproven. Records show that these platforms continue to rely heavily on self-declared ages and that children can still be exposed to harmful content despite existing safeguards.
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