TikTok has new safety setting to protect kids under the age of 16
Since its inception, the social media platform has worked hard to make sure it is constantly improving the safety of children on the app.
In a recent blog post, the app's Head of US Safety, Eric Han, wrote: "At TikTok, we know that creativity and expression are personal. And so is privacy."
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Parents are constantly facing an inner battle on whether they should give their children access to social media applications.
Most of the time, their biggest concern is that they don't know who their kids could be interacting with or who is trying to approach their children.
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But in today's day and age, restricting kids from these platforms completely is out of the question, since everyone has an online presence.
What they can try to do, along with the actual platform itself, is try and create a safer space.
As young people start their digital journey, we believe it's important to provide them with age-appropriate privacy settings and controls.
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TikTok, which is considered one of the biggest and most popular platforms right now, has once again rolled out new privacy settings in the hopes that it will deter predators and prevent them from grooming younger teens and kids.
From this week, any user under the age of 16 will automatically have a private account.
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This means that when someone wants to follow the account, the owner of the account has to approve or decline the follower's request, giving them control.
Other changes include only allowing approved accounts and followers permission to comment on the videos shared by these accounts.
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This limits those who can comment on the videos to either "Friends" or "No One", with the removal of the "Everyone" commenting option.
The settings for the Switch and Duet feature have also been altered and are only available to people over the age of 16, and the same goes for downloading videos from the app.
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These are all just further restrictions that parents and caregivers still have control over thanks to the Family Pairing feature, which allows them to guard some of their child's experience.
While all these settings, restrictions, and changes are admirable, Danish child safety expert, Eva Fog Noer, questions whether or not these will truly be effective.
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According to Business Insider, Eva says that prohibiting these kids and their parents from choosing between the two options of open or private is never the way to go and that these children will always find a way of getting around it.
That might happen in some cases, but hopefully these settings will prove effective as they still do protect the children immensely and could help prevent harmful situations and experiences.
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We might not be able to protect our kids from everything in the world, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try.
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Main image courtesy of iStock