Update provides parents in Singapore with the industry's most comprehensive suite of options to better guide their teen's online experience

Singapore, 18 November 2020 - TikTok, the leading destination for short-form mobile videos today announced it will enhance privacy and browsing options for families by building on its existing Family Pairing features. 

As more families in Singapore continue to turn to Internet platforms like TikTok to stay entertained, informed, and connected, parents now have the option to manage their teen's online experience by linking their TikTok account to their teen's, and directly set discoverability and safety controls. Developed for parents, this suite of new features is intended to jumpstart digital wellbeing and online safety education. Learning how to navigate the digital world safely is becoming more paramount at a time when studies have shown that four in 10 young Singaporean children are at risk of cyberbullying.

TikTok Tips (@tiktoktips); Video link here

The new features include:

  • Search: Directly control whether your teen can search for content, users, hashtags, or sounds. 
  • Comments: Decide who can comment on the teen's videos (everyone, friends, no one)
  • Discoverability: Decide whether your teen's account is private (your teen decides who can see their content) or public (anyone can search and view content)
  • Liked videos: Decide who can view the videos your teen liked

"Parenting a teen's digital life can be daunting and many parents feel as though they're playing catchup when it comes to the latest technology and apps their teens use. Working with our community and industry partners, we are committed to helping facilitate important conversations within families about internet safety," said Arjun Narayan, Director Trust & Safety, TikTok, Asia Pacific. "Family Pairing was developed to help parents build upon their online safety education and define the experience that is best for their families."

Family Pairing, which allows a parent to link their TikTok account to their teen's, already offers features such as Screen Time Management, Restricted Mode, and Direct Message controls to provide parents with insight and control over how their teens use TikTok.

TikTok has taken a number of steps over the past year to improve and enhance its teams, policies, controls and educational resources. In addition to its tools for families, the platform continues to strengthen its youth safety and well-being policies. TikTok recently added more guidelines and resources to support body positivity in the community, and remove harmful content like hateful ideologies. TikTok also doesn't allow images or videos to be sent in comments or messages, because studies have linked the spread of child sexual abuse material to messaging on apps, especially those with encryption.

TikTok has also developed global partnerships to protect against child exploitation and to remove such content, terminate accounts, and report cases the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and law enforcement. Protecting minors – online and offline – is vitally important and requires collaboration between platforms, governments, and child safety organizations. That's why TikTok supports the implementation of the Voluntary Principles to Counter Online Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse, which offers a framework that can be consistently applied across sectors and services to respond to changing behaviors and protect young people.

For families who want to learn more about online safety, TikTok has created a number of resources, including its Youth Portal, Parents page, educational safety videos and more. In Singapore, TikTok has also launched previous challenges including #bettermebetterinternet and #thinkb4youdo to raise awareness and address key challenges in online safety.  

TikTok remains committed to the safety of its community – especially the youth – and will continue to develop resources, tools, and policies as it aims for the highest level of safety.

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About TikTok

TikTok is the leading destination for short-form mobile video. Our mission is to inspire creativity and bring joy. TikTok has global offices including Los Angeles, Mountain View, New York, London, Paris, Berlin, Dubai, Mumbai, Singapore, Jakarta, Seoul, and Tokyo. www.tiktok.com.