TikTok has been under scrutiny over the past year ever since the US blacklisted it as a security threat. The brand has been the center of economical and political backlash for a while and has been in and out of several courts for that reason.
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That being said, TikTok is now introducing a number of restrictions for its young audience to avoid any such backlash. First off, TikTok will stop sending push notifications to users aged between 13 and 15 years after 9 pm. As for 16 and 17-year-olds, they will no longer receive push notifications after 10 pm.
This is being done to limit the pressure to interact with the app in later hours at night to these age groups. This is because research has shown that these age groups are more susceptible to the modern pressure of social networks compared to adults.
The app is also introducing private message restrictions to the point where accounts belonging to 16 and 17-year-olds will now have their private messages disabled by default. These can be activated manually by enabling it in the account settings.
Further, videos posted by 16-year-olds will no longer be downloadable by the app, but you can enable this feature in account settings as well. Videos posted by users under 16 will also get a pop-up letting them choose who can see their content.
Of course, this system can easily be cheated by adding a false age to your account and it is unclear how TikTok plans to work around that.
