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A month after federal regulators ordered it to disclose how its practices affect children and adolescents, TikTok is hardening its privacy practices to audiences under 18.
Starting on Wednesday, the default privacy setting for accounts with users aged 13 to 15 will be private. This means that only someone the user approves of as a follower can view your videos, which was not the case previously. But teenagers can still change this setting to public, if they want to.
Older teens will not see this change to the default setting. For users aged 16 or 17, the default setting to allow people to download the videos they have created now will be “disabled” instead of “enabled”.
TikTok is also blocking users’ ability to download videos created by children under 15. This age group will also see restricted direct messages and will not be able to host live streams.
TikTok is very popular with teenagers and younger children. A feature called TikTok for younger users offers pre-selected “age-appropriate” videos. The feature was added after TikTok’s predecessor, Musica.ly, settled the FTC’s allegations that it illegally collected personal information from children. It also agreed to pay $ 5.7 million.
In the meantime, a tool called “family matching” allows parents to link their TikTok account to that of their teen to enable content and privacy settings.
Last month, the Federal Trade Commission asked the parent company of TikTok, along with Facebook, Twitter, Amazon and five other social media companies to provide detailed information on how they collect and use consumers’ personal data and how their practices affect children and adolescents.
TikTok users are asked to provide their date of birth when signing up for the service, but, as with other social media platforms, there is no real verification to ensure that it is accurate.