TikTok has announced a series of changes it says are designed to improve the safety and wellbeing of its teenage users.
In an effort to increase awareness of the dangers of spending too much time on social media, TikTok has updated its app with a new feature that will not allow push notifications after 9pm for 13–15-year-olds and 10pm for 16–17-year-olds.
This is to encourage them to focus on work, study, relaxation and sleep, the video-sharing app says.
They are also changing default settings so 16-year-olds can only receive direct messages if they opt into it themselves.
“We want to help our younger users in particular develop positive digital habits early on,” TikTok said.
The announcement follows YouTube’s introduction of measures to protect children.
Now, for those aged between 16 and 17-years old, direct messaging will be set to ‘no one’ by default so they must actively opt into the chat setting if they want it enabled.
The new changes will affect all existing users, who’ll be asked to review and confirm their privacy settings when they next send a message.
Additionally, the company says that before they can post their first TikTok to social media, under-16s will now be asked to choose who should have access, their followers, only friends or just themselves.
For those who are unfamiliar with the app – TikTok is an app which allows users to create and share short videos. The app is best known for its lip-syncing videos, where users mimic the mouth movements of singers while playing music in the background. Other popular genres include comedy, dance, and music videos.
