Let’s be honest—for many of us, TikTok is perhaps the biggest time sink, making it all too easy for us to spend hours doomscrolling on the app. That’s bad enough for us adults with a job, but it can be downright dangerous for teens.
That’s the reason why TikTok is introducing new parental controls, aimed at improving the well-being of the millions of young users. For a start, the company will set an automatic 60-minute daily screen time limit for all users under the age of 18.
This restriction, which was done after consulting current academic research and experts from the Digital Wellness Lab at Boston Children’s Hospital, forces these users to enter a passcode to continue watching, requiring them to make an active decision to extend that time. It will be rolled out in the coming weeks.
Also, to help underage users manage their screen time, those who opt out of the 60-minute default setting will be prompted to set a daily screen time limit, if they spend more than 100 minutes on the app every day. They’ll also be sent a notification in their inbox about their screen time every week.
These measures build upon several other recently-implemented safety features, such as setting the accounts of those aged between 13 to 15 to private, limiting direct messages to those aged 16 and above, and restricting livestreaming to those aged 18 and above.
Additionally, TikTok is expanding its Family Pairing feature, which allows parents and caregivers to link their account to their child’s and set restrictions. They will now be able to set custom daily screen time limits, including different limits for different days of the week. There’s also a new screen time dashboard that includes the number of times the app was opened and a breakdown of the total time spent during the day and night.
Parents will also be able to set a schedule to mute notifications from the app; TikTok already halts push notifications at 9pm for those aged 13 to 15 and 10pm for ages 16 to 17. And because custom daily screen time limits don’t just benefit teens, this feature will be rolled out to all users, along with a sleep reminder that was previously tested to select users.
