TikTok has announced new changes to its social network, and they are aimed at the safety of the little ones. And it is that the application is so addictive that minors do not know how to control the time they spend in front of the screen. For this reason, at TikTok they have decided to stop with the intention of improving the well-being of adolescents and families.
60 minute limit on TikTok
The measure is none other than a limitation of 60 minutes of use for all those accounts whose profile indicates that they are over 18 years of age. This limitation will be applied automatically in the coming weeks to all accounts set to be under 18 years of age, so many children could experience problems from one day to the next.
Why 60 minutes?
You may be wondering why cut off access to TikTok after 60 minutes and not after 2 hours or 30 minutes. Well, the people of TikTok have based themselves on studies by the Digital Wellness Lab at Boston Children’s Hospital, which after much research and testing, have determined that this is the ideal daily amount that they should consume.
Can it be expanded?
As soon as the 60 minutes come to an end, a message will request an access code to continue extending the viewing period of the social network. The interesting thing about this is that the code can be entered by the adolescents themselves, since what is sought is to raise awareness and force them to make a decision after thinking about whether they really want to continue consuming videos or not.
Remove the 60 minute notice
Obviously, the 60-minute rule can be easily removed, since all you have to do is create an account with a fictitious age. This is something that many teenagers do on a daily basis, as we have seen before how they manage to avoid account limits and bans with a made up age. So with this 60 minute thing exactly the same thing will happen.
The responsibility of parents
In any case, each parent must assess whether their child can enter certain social networks, how long they will enjoy it and whether they should be the ones to create the account or not. In the event that parents want to have more effective control over what their children do on TikTok, the application will also allow them to:
- Establish completely personalized screen time daily limits, being able to specify if weekdays are one time and weekends a different time.
- Knowing how long they are using TikTok, knowing how many times they opened the application.
- Silence notifications to avoid losing concentration, being able to define specific hours of silence.
