#tiktok-child-safety

#tiktok-child-safety

"This 'AI slop' harms children's development by distorting their sense of reality, overwhelming their learning processes and hijacking their attention, thereby extending time online and displacing offline activities necessary for their healthy development."

"We appealed and appealed and lost every appeal. And then the case was ultimately dismissed."

TikTok will be allowed to operate in Canada with new enhancements in data security and regulatory oversight. To start with, it will have to implement privacy-enhancing technologies to reduce the risk of unauthorized access that compromise Canadians' personal information. It will also have to add enhanced protections for minors and ensure transparency by letting an independent third party audit and continuously verify data access controls.

Australia became the world's first country to ban social media for children under 16 in December 2025. The ban blocks children from using Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Threads, TikTok, X, YouTube, Reddit, Twitch, and Kick. It notably doesn't include WhatsApp or YouTube Kids. The Australian government has said these social media companies must take steps to keep children off their services.

The BBC and researchers from the independent AI publication Riddance found dozens of accounts on the two platforms featuring highly sexualised black female digital characters or avatars. The images and videos were generated by AI but not labelled as such, in apparent breach of the platforms' guidelines.

For years, social media companies have disputed allegations that they harm children's mental health through deliberate design choices that addict kids to their platforms and fail to protect them from sexual predators and dangerous content. Now, these tech giants are getting a chance to make their case in courtrooms around the country, including before a jury for the first time.

US TikTok users are navigating a major ownership shift as TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC takes control of American operations, addressing longstanding national security concerns. Amid the transition, glitches, feed changes, and privacy policy scrutiny fuel uncertainty, prompting creators and casual users alike to reevaluate their engagement. Daily uninstall rates have spiked dramatically, while rival platforms gain traction, illustrating how trust, control, and technical reliability shape digital loyalty in real time.

YouTube is rolling out some additional parental controls, including a way to set time limits for viewing Shorts on teen accounts. In the near future, parents and guardians will be able to set the Shorts timer to zero on supervised accounts. "This is an industry-first feature that puts parents firmly in control of the amount of short-form content their kids watch," Jennifer Flannery O'Connor, YouTube's vice president of product management, wrote in a blog post.

Numerous major social platforms including Meta, YouTube, TikTok and Snap they will submit to a new external grading process that scores social platforms on how well they protect adolescent mental health. The program comes from the Mental Health Coalition's Safe Online Standards (SOS) initiative, which comprises about two dozen standards covering areas like platform policy, functionality, governance and transparency, content oversight and more.

Anyone wanting to get their TikTok fix in the United States recently had a rough time. The app went haywire, kicking off early on the morning of January 25, due to a power outage at a key data center that knocked out services nationwide. Users reported the app crashing, with videos getting stuck and refusing to play, upload, or even hit a single view.

oh my gosh yall IG is a drug,