TikTok confirmed this Wednesday to the American media The Verge that will globally prevent minors under 18 years of age from using appearance-altering effectsin reference to beauty filters, a measure taken to protect your mental health. This happens after several US prosecutors denounced the Chinese social network for harming the mental health of children and adolescents.
The social network indicated this Tuesday in a statement that the measure will be imposed “in the coming weeks” and that responds to a study commissioned by the British NGO Internet Matters, which raises concerns about the impact of these filters on the sense of identity of minors.
TikTok, which held a security forum in Dublin this week, said there is a “clear distinction” between filters designed to be “obvious and fun”, such as those that add animal features, and those that “alter your appearance” in a way that is almost undetectable to whoever looks. In his statement on the forum, he promised to restrict the use of “some appearance effects” to those under 18 years of age and the head of Public Policies for Safety and Wellbeing in Europe, Nikki Soo, confirmed that the measure will apply worldwidecollect The Verge.
The platform maintains that it already “proactively” tells users when certain effects have been used in the content they see, but now it will give “more information about how an effect can change its appearance” and will influence the understanding of the effects. “undesired results” of these.
Last month, fourteen US state prosecutors sued TikTok for harming children’s mental health and accused it of using a system of addictive content to profit from younger users, directly targeting the use of this type of filters. Specifically, they denounced that “beauty filters” can lower self-esteemespecially that of younger girls, and cited studies according to which 50% do not look pretty without editing their faces and 77% say they try to change or hide some part of their body with that tool.
TikTok revealed in its note that it has 175 million monthly users in Europe and that eliminates 6 million accounts each month created by children under 13 (its minimum age), which is why it collaborates with NGOs, legislators and regulators to reinforce its barriers, and is considering using technology machine learning. It also announced that in the coming weeks it will offer its users in 13 European countries local helplines with experts for the moment when they “report content in the app about suicide, self-harm and bullying“, which the platform already investigates and eliminates if it detects that its policies have been violated.