By Eric Han, Safety, TikTok

TikTok is a global community for creativity. Our platform empowers users to express themselves, inspire others, and have fun in a safe and welcoming environment. 

As part of our commitment to providing a fun and positive experience for our community, we recently reviewed our policies and protections around virtual gifting. This feature allows users to send virtual gifts to creators during a live stream, and it's one way users can show their support for and reward their favorite creators. 

Although the feature is overwhelmingly used positively, we know we have a responsibility to improve our features and policies to protect against misuse. To help see that the gifting feature continues to be used appropriately and respectfully, we are announcing new age restrictions today.

While we will continue to have a 16+ age limit for a user to host a live stream, our updated policy will only allow those aged 18 and over to purchase, send, or receive virtual gifts. Before today, anyone older than 13 was allowed to send virtual gifts, and anyone over 16 could receive them. As a reminder, purchases themselves are facilitated through the App Store or Google Play, and an individual user's settings around in-app purchases can be managed and adjusted at any time through the App Store or Google Play directly.

We are making these changes to foster a safe environment where users of all ages can enjoy a live stream without encountering misuse, such as any pressure to send virtual gifts.

Our Community Guidelines and Terms of Service exist to promote trust, respect, and a positive environment on TikTok. We will continue to introduce measures to protect our community, so our users can stay focused on what matters to them – creating, sharing, and enjoying the creativity of TikTok's community.

The updated policies will be rolling out to users over the next few weeks and will be effective across all TikTok markets before the end of the year.