TikTok on Wednesday said it will introduce an automatic daily screen time limit of one hour for accounts under the age of 18, as the social media platform faces criticism for addiction among young users.
Teens must enter a password to continue watching after 60 minutes and those under the age of 13 need a parent or guardian to set or enter a passcode to unlock an additional 30 minutes, TikTok said.
The short-form video sharing app said the change would be implemented “in the coming weeks”.
If a young person accesses TikTok through a family partner account, parents can set a maximum screen time for their child based on the day of the week, TikTok added.
The Chinese version of TikTok, Douyin, is limited to 40 minutes per day for 14-year-olds and cannot be accessed between 10:00 a.m. and 6:00 a.m.
The new feature adds to existing measures to control young people’s screen time such as the prompts launched last year that encouraged teenagers to manage their screen time and weekly inbox notifications summarizing users’ screen time.
But young users can still disable the time limit feature or lie about their age, just like on other platforms.
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Chinese social media sites have faced criticism for the excessive amount of time children between the ages of four and 18 spend scrolling through recommended videos based on their tastes and algorithms.
According to a new study by parental control app Qustodio, children will spend an average of one hour and 47 minutes on TikTok every day by 2022.
Data protection concerns in the West have also affected sites owned by Chinese company ByteDance, with European Union institutions recently ordering staff to purge the app from their devices.
The White House has given US federal agencies 30 days to remove TikTok from government-issued devices and Canada has adopted similar measures.
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