TikTok's parental controls fail to protect children from suicide, self harm and eating disorder content
cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1402513/tiktok-s-parental-controls-fail-to-protect-children-from-suicide-self-harm-and-eating-di
UK and EU law both require platforms such as TikTok to keep children safe online by assessing and mitigating the risk that they encounter harmful content, such as suicide, self harm and eating disorder content.
We have investigated how well TikTok is living up to these requirements and our findings raise serious concerns about their compliance with these laws.
We created 15 TikTok accounts in the UK and the EU, all registered as 13 year olds.
On all accounts, we enabled what TikTok calls ‘Restricted Mode’. TikTok markets this to parents as a tool that can ‘Restrict your teen’s exposure to content that may not be appropriate or comfortable for them.’ With it turned on, they say they aim ‘to only show content that’s comfortable for all audiences.’
Some of the accounts investigated eating disorder content. Initially, these accounts searched for terms such ‘#skinny’ and ‘#thin’. Afterwards, they more directly searched for eating disorder content. This was on purpose: first we searched for phrases you can imagine lots of teens might use that do not directly reference harmful material, and only after this did we search for phrases directly related to eating disorders.
Other accounts investigated self harm content. Initially, they searched for terms such as ‘#sad’ and ‘#depressed’ and after this searched for terms directly associated with self harm.
In the UK, the searches were carried out in English. In the EU, the searches were carried out in English, French, German and Spanish. A list of all the search terms used is provided in the Methodology section.
All of the accounts watched only a few minutes of content from each search term.
