TikTok is primarily known as the Launchpad for fun memes, dance routines, and lip-sync videos. The company welcomes this reputation with the slogan “The last sunny corner on the Internet”. However, TikTok has a dark side that has cast a spell over some of the app’s youngest users.
Beneath the surface, TikTok also has videos promoting anorexia, bullying, suicide, and sexual exploitation of minors. Highly personalized recommendations based on algorithms from parent company ByteDance Ltd. often make it difficult for parents to keep track of what their children see and for regulators to monitor what children they are exposed to on the app.
“Parents believe TikTok has some redeeming values,” said David Gomez, an Idaho school resource officer, on Foundering’s fourth episode: The TikTok Story. “Videos, lip-syncing, singing, dancing. OK. I see that stuff. But parents just don’t understand how many predators there are on TikTok. “
A TikTok spokesperson said the company is “deeply committed” to the safety of minors and continues to strengthen security. In January, TikTok stopped allowing strangers to comment on videos posted by users under the age of 16. In addition, the ability to download videos has been restricted and the default settings for child accounts have been changed from public to private.
But the problems started years before TikTok even existed. Kids flocked to Musical.ly, the forerunner to TikTok. At the time, one advertiser called it “the youngest social network in the world” because the audience included elementary school students.
Security attorneys said TikTok had valued the expansion of minors’ protections for years. “Your business has exploded in growth around the world, and they just haven’t made child safety a priority as it grows,” said Dawn Hawkins, who leads an advocacy group called the National Center on Sexual Exploitation.
Hawkins said she spent months helping an 8-year-old relative get inappropriate videos of him in his TikTok removed underwear. Hawkins acknowledged that TikTok made a number of coveted improvements recently, but said it is still not a safe place for very young children to run around unsupervised.
– With the support of Isabelle Lee
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