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Teens with TikTok logo: Parents should have more control
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LOIC VENANCE / AFP
It's not a good week for TikTok.
More and more states are deciding that the app poses a security risk and must therefore at least be removed from state employees' work cell phones.
Even boss Shou Zi Chew's diplomatic charm offensive doesn't seem to have caught on with political decision-makers.
Not even the promise to set up new data centers in Europe was apparently able to give the platform belonging to the Chinese ByteDance group plus points.
On Wednesday, after the European Commission, the European Parliament also banned its employees from using the app on company devices.
Amid the controversy, the short video platform has announced new safety features, especially for minors.
In the future, the service will change the screen time setting for teenagers under the age of 18 to a maximum of 60 minutes a day.
When the time is up, the young people have to enter a numerical code in order to see more videos.
After 100 minutes, a warning is displayed to encourage users to activate a function to regularly check their screen time.
These restrictions are to be introduced in the coming weeks and will then automatically be preset for all users under the age of 18.
TikTok announced this in a blog post on Wednesday.
The preset limit can also be changed or switched off manually in the app.
TikTok should decide which account belongs to an under 18-year-old and which not based on the age that users themselves have indicated in the app.
Endless stream of videos
With this step, TikTok obviously wants to address a central point of criticism: The app manages to tie teenagers to the screen for hours like hardly any competitor.
Internal documents revealed in 2021 how much the company is optimizing its algorithms to constantly show new videos to its predominantly young clientele.
Critics even speak of a »dependency machine«.
The group had already introduced optional usage limits in 2019, but these apparently did not change the triumph of the app.
There have also been criticisms of the types of videos that are recommended and the platform's moderation practices.
In order to give parents a way to influence their children's usage time, TikTok has upgraded the so-called accompanied mode, which allows parents to control their children's usage.
In the future, parents should be able to set the daily screen time and make different specifications for the days of the week.
You can also mute the notifications so the teens don't know about new messages on the platform.
In a dashboard, the legal guardians can find out about the exact times of use.
With the changes, TikTok is making a second attempt to respond to political concerns.
Last June, TikTok promised better protection against hidden advertising at the end of year-long talks with the EU Commission.
The European consumer association Beuc had previously complained that children and young people were not adequately protected from hidden advertising and potentially harmful content.
tmk/dpa