Despite platform’s limits on adult content, study finds it not only accessible but often suggested
TikTok has directed children’s accounts to pornographic content within a small number of clicks, according to a report by a campaign group.
Global Witness set up fake accounts using a 13-year-old’s birth date and turned on the video app’s “restricted mode”, which limits exposure to “sexually suggestive” content.
Researchers found TikTok suggested sexualised and explicit search terms to seven test accounts that were created on clean phones with no search history.
How about you force age responsible onto the parents? Or at least tax them.
With this kind of thing there needs to be more help than that, because there isn’t social consensus (yet) around keeping kids away from personalised-algorithm-controlled services. That means there is intense pressure on parents to let their kids use tiktok, instagram and so on, and if they resist that pressure they’re forcing their child into isolation from the socialising that’s going on on these platforms.
There are two acceptable options I see, but both require societal change which probably can’t happen without top-down intervention:
(It may be that 1 is the only acceptable option but I haven’t seen anything robust on the harms so far).
“Forcing age responsible” (if I understand that…) onto parents is no use if they do the right thing and make sure their kid’s account is marked as under 18 but it then receives mature content anyway.
How about we don’t let people add to society until there is a “consensus” you can have kids when you get your concensus card.
i mean, yeah, but also kids are going to figure out how to get on the more accessible parts of the internet that we really would prefer they don’t go on. there’s part of me that thinks yeah, make a law but make it toothless, so you have to earn your porn. learn how to vpn or tor or whatever. computer illiteracy is a problem.
Your same argument can be used about kids figuring out about getting around the show a government i.d. to access “adult sites”
i’m glad we’re agreeing. i think. kids need to learn how to get around government id checks
Yes that will make the world a better place and usher in a new era /s
I dns block TikTok and they kids aren’t allowed on any meta properties. I expect that there will be more pushback in the next couple years.
My challenge truly is figuring out how to arm them to be able to process and critically evaluate social media without exposure to it. Truth in andvertising, and recently AI.
Increasingly I think that it’s a matter of educating them about the risks, like drugs and alcohol. As if that works, unfortunately.
I truly appreciate you, you are doing a stand up job. Thank you for being a parent. I wish you could teach the other clowns in this country.
i mean just because our generations (i’m assuming you’re somewhere within 20 years of me) completely fucked that up via overexaggerating risks doesn’t mean we have to do that to the next ones. we can fuck up in our own special way.
Teach them mechanisms of psychological control and propaganda–how-to, so they recognize when it happens.