According to the Pew Research Center, about two-thirds of American teens use TikTok.Ĭormac Keenan, head of trust and safety at TikTok, said in a blog post on Wednesday that when the 60-minute limit is reached, children and teenagers will be prompted to enter a passcode and make an “active decision” to keep watching.
In the United States, families have struggled with limiting the amount of time their children spend on the Chinese-owned video-sharing app. In 2021, Chinese authorities issued new rules limiting the amount of time that minors could play online games to only an hour a day and only on Fridays, weekends and public holidays – an effort to curb internet addiction.
The screen limit update, announced on Wednesday, mirrors gaming rules imposed on young people in China, where TikTok’s parent company ByteDance was based before it moved to Singapore. The changes come amid growing concerns among different governments around the world about the app’s security, and ability to alter its algorithm to push certain posts. TikTok is to set a default 60-minute daily time limit for all accounts held by under-18s and is developing a tool to allow parents to prevent their children from viewing content containing certain words or hashtags as the company looks to shore up its public image.
