TikTok is making a big change for millions and people are not happy about it

TIKTOK has launched a range of new features aimed at curbing the time teenagers spend on the social media platform.

There is concern that teenagers and children are spending too much time on the app.

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TikTok’s popularity exploded at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic when most children were out of school and continued their education at home.

Now any account owned by anyone under the age of 18 will automatically be set to a daily screen time limit of 60 minutes under new rules.

If teens decide to turn off this new default limit and spend more than 100 minutes in a day on TikTok, the app will send them a push notification asking them to set a daily screen time limit for themselves.

“In our first month of testing, this approach increased usage of our screen time management tools by 234%,” said Cormac Keenan, Head of Trust and Safety at TikTok.

“And we send every teenage account a weekly inbox notification with a summary of their screen time.”

Teens can adjust their screen time limit for each day of the week, so they might have more time to scroll the app on weekends.

A new Screen Time dashboard also gives parents and carers an overview of how their children are using the app.

This includes how much time was spent scrolling both during the day and at night, as well as how often TikTok was opened.

As part of the new settings, TikTok now offers parents the ability to set a custom schedule to mute notifications.

“While there is no collectively held position on how much screen time is ‘too much’, or even the impact of screen time more broadly, we recognize that teenagers typically need additional support as they begin to navigate the online world independently explore,” added Keenan.

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