Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Social Networks United States

A Third of TikTok's US Users May Be 14 or Under, Raising Safety Questions (nytimes.com) 39

If Microsoft or another company buys TikTok before President Trump bans the Chinese-owned video app on national security grounds, it will acquire a giant community of devoted fans and a lucrative platform for selling ads. It might be buying something else, too: a big population of users ages 14 and under. The minimum age for using TikTok is 13. From a report: In July, TikTok classified more than a third of its 49 million daily users in the United States as being 14 years old or younger, according to internal company data and documents that were reviewed by The New York Times. While some of those users are likely to be 13 or 14, one former employee said TikTok workers had previously pointed out videos from children who appeared to be even younger that were allowed to remain online for weeks. The number of users who TikTok believes might be younger than 13 raises questions about whether the company is doing enough to protect them. In the United States, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act requires internet platforms to obtain parental permission before collecting personal information on children under 13. The operators of Musical.ly, an app that was merged into TikTok in 2018, paid a $5.7 million fine last year to settle accusations from the Federal Trade Commission that it had broken those rules.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

A Third of TikTok's US Users May Be 14 or Under, Raising Safety Questions

Comments Filter:
  • by memory_register ( 6248354 ) on Friday August 14, 2020 @09:19AM (#60400995)
    It seems like MS might have some sore pride after Mixer (their Twitch alternative) flopped. Maybe this fire sale purchase of TikTok is their way of saving face and getting back in the game?
  • Safety Questions? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Friday August 14, 2020 @09:30AM (#60401029) Homepage Journal

    You mean the same as any other social media platform with minor users? Like... all of them?

    • Re:Safety Questions? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14, 2020 @10:53AM (#60401229)

      Maybe I don't entirely know what I'm talking about because I've never used TikTok. But as a parent of at least one child that uses TikTok, I personally find some aspects of it pretty concerning. Probably the viral Belle Delphine videos ruined anything I might have otherwise thought fine with the platform. Kids can be really impressionable. Not much different than how a very large number of teens who appear to honestly believe they will be able to make a living playing video games and be as successful as their favorite full time streamers.

      When you take that and put it on a platform with the sole purpose of making not-thought-out video clips of yourself, which seem to be able to spread so virally, and often in ways that are difficult to monitor before they send it out there; we run the risk of allowing widespread unwanted attention being directly focused on these kids, and again potentially without you as a parent knowing about it.

      I'm lucky in a way that 2 of my teen kids are afraid of social media thanks to my constant discussions with them in the dangers of it, my younger one however just has the personality type where she thrives on attention and drama, and social media fits that bill entirely. The fact that it makes her proud that she can submit a few second video of her dancing and singing in her bedroom, within a few hours get what I'm told "hundreds of views, and positive feedback" makes her proud and entices her to post even more kinda scares me. I don't know who all these people are, probably some are sexual predators, because honestly, who sits and watches an 11 year old sing and dance in their pajamas, other than other 11 year olds and sexual predators?

      • Kids and Teens are irresponsible, and have been even before social media.
        However I feel that parents don't necessarily have to tools to teach their children responsible social media skills.
        Talking as an older adult, things that my parents had taught me. TV Personalities are Actors, They make their money pretending to be someone different. Even if they are playing themselves, they are often not showing the real person, but playing a persona. The problem with social media, is that it is too easy to get you

      • All of those concerns are legitimate, but they apply to every social network that doesn't ban children, which pretty much means just some dating sites. I have issues with TikTok but "think of the children" isn't a valid argument for going after them, and only them.

      • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        I'm lucky in a way that 2 of my teen kids are afraid of social media thanks to my constant discussions with them in the dangers of it, my younger one however just has the personality type where she thrives on attention and drama, and social media fits that bill entirely. The fact that it makes her proud that she can submit a few second video of her dancing and singing in her bedroom, within a few hours get what I'm told "hundreds of views, and positive feedback" makes her proud and entices her to post even

      • You hit that nail right on the head. There's a subreddit called TikTokthots where your daughters dancing might be been shared outside of the group she intended if it's risque in nature.

        I know we all have raging hormones as teens; but I don't recall it being so overtly public back in the 90s. This new public hypersexualization Gen Z keeps shoving out on the internet publicly is alarming to me.

        Granted I got to grow up watching Trainspotting, Kids, American history X, and others that shocked me into reality as

      • Funny that only TikTok is an issue when Snapchat has exactly the same problems with minors and it's ok.

        The Chinese parent company behind TikTok has the TikTok servers in the US, has a US born CEO, exposed their search algorithms to the US government, and still Trump thinks it isn't enough. The business now has to be "sold" to a US company on a fire sale. By that yardstick you can't have any Chinese software sold or used in the US either.

        Even the Chinese allow foreign companies to operate as long as they fol

  • by Headw1nd ( 829599 ) on Friday August 14, 2020 @10:00AM (#60401111)
    Certainly Microsoft is unfamiliar with the liability issues, as all they have run so far are secure and age-gated communities like Xbox live.
  • When the Internet started to become a thing, kids under 14 were the main users. I know because none of the adults around me understood why it was important or how to do anything with it, but all the kids in the school did. Now the same people, grown up, wants to tell their kids how to use it.

    • The Internet of today is very different than the Internet of 20 years ago. Social media and video platforms didn't exist. It's important for parents to understand what their kids are getting into.
      • Not sure how new that is- I seriously doubt that my parents in the 90s understood that me and my friends were going to hang out with a bunch of greybeards from the local BBS either.
      • Re: Selfish (Score:5, Informative)

        by iggymanz ( 596061 ) on Friday August 14, 2020 @11:00AM (#60401245)

        utterly false and ignorant statement. those of us on the internet for 4 decades were definitely doing "social media", and it was college students, national labs and government employees on it.

        • It wasn't as intensely focused to maximise engagement though. The social media I had pre-facebook was IRC, forum, the old usenet. We had adverts and the detested pop-up and pop-under ad, but there was no analytics engine determining exactly which video out of a library of billions would be most likely to retain our attention a few minutes more, or which news article would be best suited to make us angry so we would stay around to share outrage with all our contacts.

        • utterly false and ignorant statement. those of us on the internet for 4 decades were definitely doing "social media", and it was college students, national labs and government employees on it.

          Does reading Carl Lydick rants on usenet count as social media?

        • So does any online communication count as social media to you? Why not snail mail? You certainly weren't snapping selfies and livestreaming on your smartphone back in the 80s.
          • no, but chat, and certain forum and bulletin board formats allowing conversion do. All around from the late 1970s onward.

        • We we social though? Thought we were all raging flamelords trying to prove why AMD was better than Intel; PS1 was better than Xbox and Bill gates was the evil empire back then.

          I don't consider phpBB's, Tripod, Geocities sites as "social media". Sure MySpace was 2003, Digg was 2004; but there was nowhere near the data harvesting, fringe radical groups full of insanity, bot armies, state sponsored misinformation, and pictures of food back then.

          What social media are you referring to from the early 90s-mid 2000

      • Back in the early 90's when I was 14, I just clicked on the link that said Yes I was 18 and over. I was able to access a whole slew of stuff, that my parents didn't know I was getting into. I was a much better liar than my parents taught, because I would be really bad on small things that I didn't care if they found out or not.
        I was also Running my own BBS at the time (Which I ran more legit and targeted at my age, than by browsing history) in which I was exposed and in communication with a lot of people

    • Re:Selfish (Score:4, Informative)

      by mark-t ( 151149 ) <marktNO@SPAMnerdflat.com> on Friday August 14, 2020 @10:23AM (#60401153) Journal
      When the internet started to become a thing, the main users were students going to college or a university, not kids under the age of 14.
    • "Now the same people, grown up, wants to tell their kids how to use it."

      So what you're saying is that the people who grew up with it and therefore know what it's about have something to say about it?

    • I thought Cerf was pushing forty when Internet started to become a thing, not fourteen.
  • Please won't someone think of the children?

  • Man, the Tik Tok press releases from both sides are really flying today.

    • Why wouldn't they be? It's a major news story in the technology industry, and one that is developing at a rapid pace. Yesterday's news is already out of date.

      • Why wouldn't they be? It's a major news story in the technology industry, and one that is developing at a rapid pace. Yesterday's news is already out of date.

        Is it possible the reason it's a major news story in the technology industry is because of the heated exchange of press releases? Is the news driving the stories or are the stories driving the news?

        As of this moment, seven of the last ten front page stories here on Slashdot are regarding the relationship of China and the US.

  • by FeelGood314 ( 2516288 ) on Friday August 14, 2020 @12:07PM (#60401481)
    And there are definitely things that she has done on there that I've had to talk to her about but I'm her friend on it, I can see what she does. It's a learning process about how to interact online. My attitude is my kids can do stupid things as long as I know about it and as long as they will ask for help when something goes wrong. I don't want my kids going off in secret, lying about their age, getting in trouble and then being too scared to ask for help. Kids learn responsibility by being given the chance to make mistakes. Hopefully they make lots of small mistakes when they are young and have a safety net to fall back on and not make big mistakes as adults.
  • Realistically is the USA any better than China?
    As an EU citizen I think theyâ(TM)re as bad as each other...

    • by HiThere ( 15173 )

      In certain ways they seem pretty much the same. In others they are very different. Bad is a judgement call, but after acknowledging that I think I prefer the US on civil rights, even after acknowledging the amount of propaganda in what I'm told (and hence the high levels of uncertainty). It's far from perfect, of course, but that seems true of everywhere.

    • I can stand in front of the white house and yell that the president is a obese cheeto all I want. Dare someone to call Xi Pooh bear, or draw a picture of Puntin as a drag queen and see how it goes. We don't have great data protection here; but also the internet is wide open unlike other firewalled countries.

      We also have food security and a reasonable population. If things ever get bad in China 1.4bn mouths to feed might pose to be a problem. Lots of areas we could improve though; less war mongering, better/

  • Sounds like FUD. Which is it? Are they or are they not?

    The lower age limit is 13, right? So, 14 or under possibly completely meets that requirement.

GREAT MOMENTS IN HISTORY (#7): April 2, 1751 Issac Newton becomes discouraged when he falls up a flight of stairs.

Working...