In its pursuit of enhancing the safety of underage users and complying with digital laws, the “TikTok” platform has unveiled plans to develop mechanisms for verifying user ages.
This announcement comes amid increasing regulatory pressure on social media companies to ensure the protection of children online.
“TikTok,” owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, announced that in the coming weeks, it will begin implementing advanced technology to verify user ages, with the aim of managing underage accounts more accurately and effectively.
This initiative comes in response to growing global demands, especially from Europe, to establish strict mechanisms for protecting children in the digital environment. The new system, developed after a year-long trial in Britain as a pilot phase, involves the use of software that relies on analyzing account information and potential user behavior, including the content of posts and patterns of interaction with the application, to determine if the user may be under 13 years of age.
Under this technology, accounts classified as underage will not be automatically banned, but will be sent for human review by specialized monitors before a decision to close them is made.
The new system also allows users who may have been misidentified the opportunity to appeal using official verification methods such as “image-based age estimation” or “authorization of a credit card or government ID document.”
“TikTok” confirmed that this step is part of efforts to comply with global and European Union legislation related to data protection and user privacy, attempting to strike a balance between age verification without compromising strict privacy protection laws.
It pointed out that the system “is not used for purposes other than protecting younger users, and that predicting the user’s age is only used to guide cases for human review and continuously improve the technology.”
This announcement comes amid increasing international pressure on social media platforms to enhance the protection of minors, especially after Australia banned the use of these networks by those under 16, followed by the deletion of millions of accounts believed to belong to minors.
Europe itself is witnessing increasing discussions about the permissible age of use, with some policymakers in the European Parliament calling for raising the legal age for using social platforms and linking it to difficult verification mechanisms that go beyond “simple self-verification.”
In addition to the age verification system, “TikTok” announced a set of supporting controls to protect younger users, such as preventing direct messaging for users under 16, setting daily usage limits, and restricting notifications for teenagers up to the age of 18.
This step focuses on providing a social network that older age groups can benefit from while reducing the risks to children, amid growing concerns about the psychological and social effects of intensive use of social media on minors. (Eram News)
