For more than a decade, many organisations and companies have tried to solve the complex challenge of online age assurance. Despite these efforts, there is still no globally agreed-upon method for effectively confirming a person's age in a way that also preserves their privacy.
We believe that a multi-layered approach is essential to protecting teens and upholding safety-by-design principles. We're committed to keeping children off our platform, providing teens with age-appropriate experiences, and continuing to assess and implement a range of solutions. We're investing in new technologies and partnerships to bolster our existing efforts, while also engaging with regulators, NGOs, and the industry to build consensus on effective and sustainable solutions that appropriately balance safety and privacy.
Principles that guide TikTok's implementation of age assurance
As a platform that serves a community of more than one billion people around the world, we are guided by our Community Principles. Inclusivity, accessibility, and upholding human rights are particularly important to how we approach age assurance. With a core mission to inspire creativity and bring joy, coupled with strong proactive enforcement of our comprehensive trust and safety policies, we also carefully consider what is proportionate to the risks that someone could encounter on our platform.
Multiple checks help to make sure an account isn't used by someone underage
In most parts of the world, the minimum age to use TikTok is 13. We use a multi-layered approach to confirm someone's age or detect when they may not actually be the age they say they are.
- When people create an account, they must add their birthdate. If someone fails to meet our minimum age, we suspend their ability to immediately re-create an account using a different date of birth.
- Our age gate is just one of multiple checks. We use a range of technologies today for age assurance and these look at a range of signals, like a profile image or content referencing an upcoming birthday, to check whether someone's age is what they've said. We've been piloting new AI technologies in the U.K. over the last year and found they've strengthened our efforts to remove thousands of additional accounts under 13. We're planning to roll this technology out more widely, including in the E.U., and are currently discussing it with our European privacy regulator.
- We train our moderation teams to be alert to signs that an account may be used by a child under the age of 13. If they're reviewing content for another reason but suspect an account belongs to an underage user, they can send it to our specialised review team with deeper expertise on age assurance. Since judging age can be complex, our teams are instructed to err on the side of caution when making enforcement decisions. When in doubt, we will remove an account we suspect may be under 13. We also allow anyone to report an account they believe belongs to someone under 13. You don't even need a TikTok account to do this.
By combining these age detection methods together, we remove around 6 million underage accounts globally every single month.
Enforcing age-appropriate experiences
On TikTok, teen accounts have more than 50 safeguards built in by default. For instance, people must be at least 16 years old to use our direct messaging feature or have their content eligible to appear in the For You feed. Every teen under 18 has a screen time limit automatically set to 60 minutes by default and won't receive notifications after bed time. Additionally, content that we identify as not suitable for teens is filtered from their experience.
To help ensure that teens are in the right experience for their age, we leverage technologies that help predict whether a person falls within a certain age range (e.g., 13-15). If the estimate doesn't match the date of birth provided at sign-up, a moderator can review the account and place it into the correct age experience. We've been piloting this technology in Europe and once we confirm its effectiveness, we plan to roll it out to more markets in the future.
Creating a fair and equitable age assurance system
Every day, we suspend tens of thousands of accounts globally because we don't think our age requirements have been met. These suspensions can have a real-world impact. If we wrongly suspend an account and someone loses access to our platform, their access to earn an income from TikTok, TikTok Shop or LIVE can impact their livelihood. We therefore give everyone the chance to let us know if they think we have made a mistake. Recognising that not everyone has an official form of identification, like a passport or national identity card, we've built a comprehensive system that includes a range of options that people can use to confirm their age.
Our part in the future of age assurance online
Understandably, there is a desire for a single, perfect solution to the challenge of online age assurance. While our primary focus is on continuing to enforce our platform's age policies, we're also committed to sharing our expertise and learnings with policymakers to find constructive solutions, together. Since its first session last year, TikTok has engaged in the Global Multistakeholder Dialogue on Age Assurance convened by the Centre for Information Policy Leadership (CIPL) and WeProtect Global Alliance. This dialogue aims to explore the complex challenges of age assurance and minor safety, whilst driving consensus across the sector. To that end, we have already started to explore whether the European Commission's planned age verification app could be an effective additional tool for us. However, for any solution to be truly effective, it's crucial to have a level playing field in which peer platforms are subject to the same regulatory requirements and are held to the same standards.
We take our responsibility to protect our community incredibly seriously. It is the most important work we do, and we will continue to innovate to keep our community safe. We look forward to sharing more about our work in the future. To learn more about the safety features and resources we offer teens and families, check out our Safety Centre.