Grantham TikTok creator with more than 50,000 followers says ‘we need to do something’ about child safety on popular app
A Grantham TikToker with more than 50,000 followers has spoken out about the dangers to child safety posed by the popular social media app.
User ‘Dark_Kiwi_Kieran’ started creating TikTok’s in February of this year and through live streams he has “built up a great community of people”.
However, the TikTok creator believes that there is a “massive problem” with child safety on the app that “needs to be voiced”.
He believes there needs to be more safeguards in place to stop children being able to go live on TikTok.
TikTok policy states that for users to ‘go live’ they must be over 18 (raised from 16 in November last year) and have at least 1,000 followers.
The Grantham creator said: “The main issue with child safety is that literally anyone can go live and be given exposure in front of millions of users, some of which will be children.
“In my opinion, TikTok should raise the amount of followers to go live to around 10,000, and also at the very least they should be implementing ID checks for everyone before being allowed to use the live feature.
“This would be the easiest way to protect any children from the dangers that might be on the app.
“This is so important for the obvious reasons, children are losing their innocence behind closed doors, behind their phone screens, and we have to do something about it.”
TikTok’s community guidelines place restrictions on users under 18.
If TikTok identifies age-restricted content during a ‘live’, it will:
Not recommend the live to users aged between 13 and 17
Notify the host, younger viewers and co-hosts that content is age-restricted and younger viewers will be removed
Hosts can remove guests or co-hosts whose live content is flagged as age restricted
Younger users will not be able to access a live through a search or shared link.
TikTok has also recently introduced a way for creators to choose if they would like to only reach an adult audience.
Do you think TikTok needs more safety guidelines for children? Let us know at katie.green@granthamjournal.co.uk
