TikTok is setting a 60-minute daily screen time limit for users who are aged under 18.
This feature is meant to help people stay in control of their use and to allow parents to prevent their children from viewing content containing certain words or hashtags as the company looks to clean up its public image.
Users of the platform have to be at least 13, and, as part of this new feature, anyone under the age of 18 will receive a weekly notification with a “recap of their screen time”.
If young people hit the new limit, they will have to enter a passcode to continue to use the service that day. However, they will be able to opt out of the new measure.
TikTok said the new limit comes after it brought in a prompt last year to encourage teens to manage their screen time.
Anyone who opts out of the new 60-minute restriction, but goes on to use the app for 100 minutes a day, will receive a prompt from TikTok to set their screen time controls.
There have been growing concerns about what young people are exposed to on social media and the potential harm it might cause.
Other existing safety features for teen accounts on TikTok include having accounts set to private by default for those between the ages of 13 and 15 and only providing direct messaging to accounts where the user is at least 16 years old.
The company is also launching a sleep reminder to help people plan when they want to be offline at night. For the sleep feature, users will be able to set a time and when the time arrives, a pop-up will remind the user that it’s time to log off.
BY NKATHA WAINAINA