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Your child could be seeing inappropriate content in this video app. Keep him safe.

By on November 11, 2019

One Sunday afternoon, my nine-year-old took a video of himself giving commands to our  2-year old Golden Retriever. Using a funny voice-over trick offered on the wildly popular app, TikTok, he shared it online.

The next day, the video goes viral with 87,000 likes and over 800 comments.

Since 2014, the app has become hugely popular with the teens. But recently, the TikTok mania has been attracting children as young as mine.
Unlike facebook where you need to be at least 13 to be able to create an account,
TikTok does none of that. For as long as you have a smartphone, you can easily download the app via the App store or Google Play.
TikTok feeds can easily get children hooked with a diverse catalog of  videos across genres from pets to dancing, to food and silly voiceovers. Although some if not most are funny and engaging, no one moderates the content. That could get children exposed to potentially dangerous pranks, mature videos and discussions, colorful language and violence. When I scrolled through the content, I was surprised to see inappropriate content that is hard for parents of young kids to digest. Never before has a piece of app left me feeling confused and worried.
I invite all parents to check out the app themselves. You might not see anything negative but there is a lot of videos of women in scanty clothing or partial nudity as well as provocative dancing.
When my husband and I told our son to stop using TikTok for now until he becomes older because of its potential harm, he agreed without question. Instead, we downloaded the YouTube Kids app which we find to be a more appropriate option for his age than TikTok. We’ve also set up the free parental controls available on our kid’s iPad where it asks for a password. He now asks us for any random thing he wants to download.

Android users can use the “app locker” from Google Play to prevent their child from downloading anything without a pin number to unlock it.

With these controls, you know what they can and cannot access on their device.

 

About Kathy Silva