Amid the growing call for the outright banning of TikTok, the social media app is making some pre-emptive moves, itself.
TikTok announced yesterday that they are imposing one-hour time limits on accounts for users 18-and-under. After the hour is up, users will get a notification and they will have to enter a code to keep scrolling.
For users 12-and-under, a parent or guardian will have to enter the code and that will only extend viewing time by 30 more minutes. Kids 13-and-up can enter their own codes to keep going, but they’ll still see the time alerts. It’s set to become the default setting for all under-18 accounts.
“While there’s no collectively-endorsed position on the ‘right’ amount of screen time or even the impact of screen time more broadly,” Cormac Keenan, Head of Trust and Safety for TikTok, said in a statement, “We consulted the current academic research and experts from the Digital Wellness Lab at Boston Children’s Hospital in choosing this limit.”
Parents will also see how much time their kids are spending on the app and can customize their limit based off days. For instance, you can set it to be longer on the weekends. Adults can even opt-in, if they so choose.
This comes as federal agencies were given 30 days to delete the TikTok on all government-issued phones after Congress passed a law in December.
