TikTok Releases New Updates to Protect Young Users

TikTok announced on Wednesday a raft of changes to its default privacy settings for younger users as part of its ongoing effort to implement better systems to protect the members. The change will see all accounts created by users aged 13-15 now set to 'Private' by default. People under 13 are technically not allowed to sign-up for a regular TikTok account.

In addition, TikTok is also implementing new restrictions on comments, engagement and the downloading of videos created by younger users.

TikTok, owned by ByteDance, has become popular with young and teen users worldwide over the past few years, the app began implementing additional privacy controls to help bring the app into line with regulations designed to protect child privacy online, such as the US's child privacy act ''COPPA''.

On other hand, the platform has faced a range of legal challenges on this - in July 2019, the UK Information Commissioner launched an investigation into how the app handles the personal data of its young users, and whether it prioritizes the safety of children on its network.

Later, on February 2019, the FTC fined TikTok a record $5.7 million for illegally collecting the names, email addresses, pictures and locations of kids under age 13. And in August last year, French officials announced a new investigation into app's data-gathering practices, primarily due to concerns around its measures to protect younger users.

Noteworthy, USA administration announced in 2020 that it is banning China’s TikTok and WeChat services from mobile app stores.