TikTok just announced that all users under the age of 18 will have their screen time limited to 60 minutes per day.
Users have to be at least 13 years old to make a TikTok account, and if a teen goes over the new 60-minute limit, they’ll have to enter a passcode to keep watching. Parents will have to set or enter a passcode for users under 13 who are using TikTok for Younger Users(Opens in a new tab) to give them just 30 more minutes to watch. If it’s like the time limits we set on apps on our phones, I think most users will just enter the passcode and go on with their day.
Cormac Keenan, TikTok’s head of trust and safety, said in a statement, “Research also shows that being more aware of how we spend our time can help us make better decisions” (Opens in a new tab). “So we’re also asking teens to set a daily screen time limit if they spend more than 100 minutes on TikTok in a day and don’t want the default of 60 minutes.”
The social media platform also announced other safety measures for teens. For example, every teen account will get a weekly summary of how much time they spend on their screens, and teens who use the app for more than 100 minutes a day will be asked to set a limit.
Experts on social media and youth activists are still arguing about how social media affects young people’s mental health. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Opens in a new tab) found that the suicide rate among people ages 10 to 24 rose by 56% from 2007 to 2017, after being stable for seven years. This makes suicide the second leading cause of death in this age group, after accidents. Some experts say that social media is partly to blame for the rise. According to the Pew Research Center, almost twice as many teens used the internet “almost constantly” in 2018 as they did in 2014. At the same time, research has shown that limiting how much time young people spend in front of a screen can make them feel a little better about themselves.
It’s not clear how much of an effect the time limits will have, but one thing is for sure: it’s better than the old videos of creators telling users to take a break.
Sources – Mashable, Techcrunch