TikTok Sets One Hour Daily Limit For Teens
TikTok is setting a 60-minute daily screen time limit for users who are under the age of 18.
On Wednesday, TikTok announced that it would be making “changes to help teens manage their time on TikTok.”
According to the social media platform, every TikTok account belonging to an individual under 18 years old will soon automatically be set to a 60-minute daily screen limit.
After the first hour’s use each day, the app, will warn a teenage user that their time is up “so it’s easier to log off.”
However, teen users will have the ability to turn off the 60-minute daily screen time limit setting. When teens reach the one-hour time limit, they will be prompted to enter a passcode to activate additional scrolling time.
“If the 60-minute limit is reached, teens will be prompted to enter a passcode in order to continue watching, requiring them to make an active decision to extend that time,” Head of Trust and Safety at TikTok, Cornan Keenan writes in the announcement.
Users of the platform have to be at least 13 years old, and, as part of this new feature, anyone under the age of 18 will receive a weekly notification with a “recap of their screen time”.
Meanwhile, if a TikTok user is under the age of 13, a parent or guardian will have to enter a passcode every 30 minutes to give their child additional screen time.
TikTok says the new limit comes after it brought in a prompt last year to encourage teens to manage their screen time. The company says this helped “increase the use of our screen time tools by 234 percent”.
The video app, which is owned by Chinese firm ByteDance, says it will be rolling out the new feature in the coming weeks.
TikTok’s introduction of time limits for younger users comes amid growing concern from lawmakers and parent groups about the app’s deliberately addictive algorithm and its impact on the mental health of teens.
In January, the public school district in Seattle filed a lawsuit against the companies behind TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat accusing them of harming young people’s mental health.
Seattle Public Schools is the first school district in the U.S. to file such a case against the companies.
Image credits: Header photo licensed via Depositphotos.
