Navigating TikTok Parental Controls: A Guide for Parents
As parents, we want to ensure our children are safe and protected while using the internet, though it can be hard to keep up with the latest trends and features, especially when it comes to parental controls. In this blog post, we’ll help you take a look at TikTok parental controls and how you can set them up to make the app kid-friendly!
TikTok has become one of the most popular social media platforms among kids and teenagers thanks to the app’s short-form videos and creative features. In fact, by the end of 2021, kids and teens were watching an average of 91 minutes of TikTok per day on a global basis, surpassing YouTube. With the rise of TikTok, it’s important for parents to be aware of the potential dangers of the app, such as cyberbullying, inappropriate content, and online predators. That’s why TikTok parental controls are essential for keeping your child safe.
TikTok’s “Digital Wellbeing” tools allow you to set parental control restrictions on your child’s account and monitor their activity.
How to set TikTok parental controls:
- Open TikTok and tap Profile in the bottom menu bar.
- Tap the Menu button in the top right corner.
- Tap Settings and Privacy.
From this menu, you have a few key parental control options, including Content Preferences, Screen Time and Family Pairing.
Content Preferences
TikTok’s content preferences help you manage the videos you can see in TikTok and offers:
- Filter video keywords so that your child won’t see videos containing words you determine in their “For You” or “Following” feeds.
- Restricted Mode which limits the appearance of content that may not be appropriate for all audiences
Screen Time
TikTok provides various screen time management settings helping you to manage your TikTok usage, including:
- Set daily screen time limits and get notified at various intervals per day (40, 60, 90 or 120 minutes). Once the time limit has been reached, it can only be overruled with a passcode determined by you when setting the feature up.
- Schedule screen time break reminders to help maintain a healthy balance.
- Receive weekly screen time updates.
Note: While Content Preferences and Screen time are available, many of the settings can be reverted by your child, which is why we highly recommend enabling Family Pairing! See why below.
Family Pairing
Family Pairing gives you a more comprehensive set of parental controls and allows you to connect your TikTok account with your child’s TikTok account.
- Get access to the Content Preferences and Screen Time settings mentioned above to filter out inappropriate content, control the amount of time your child spends on TikTok each day and set a passcode once the screen time limit has been reached.
- The ability to switch your child’s account from public to private.
- Decide whether your child’s account can be recommended to others.
- Decide who can view your child’s liked videos.
- View your child’s activity including the content they have liked, commented on and shared.
- Restrict who can send your child direct messages, or turn off direct messaging (direct messaging is automatically turned off for registered accounts between the ages of 13 and 15).
Things to keep in mind when enabling TikTok parental controls:
- TikTok’s Family Pairing parental controls are only available on the TikTok mobile app and not on mobile and desktop browsers. If your child accesses TikTok from a browser as well as the mobile app, you may want to use the parental controls available on the mobile and desktop browser, in addition to TikTok’s mobile app parental controls.
- Kids can uninstall and reinstall TikTok and create a new account using different login credentials (phone number, email address, Facebook, Apple, Google or Twitter).
Useful TikTok resources for parents, carers and new users:
Guardian’s Guide – designed to provide an overview of TikTok including the inbuilt tools and controls to keep the TikTok community safe.
Youth Portal – offers both in-app tools and educational content to provide you with all the information you need to enjoy the best possible experience as part of the TikTok community.
Safety Centre – informative guides to help you learn more about TikTok’s approach to safety, privacy, and security.
Community Guidelines – TikTok’s set of norms and common code of conduct that provide for a safe and welcoming space for everyone.
Looking for a new and unique way of TikTok parental control?
It’s important to remember that TikTok’s algorithm, as with many other social media platforms, is designed to keep users engaged for as long as possible. This makes it incredibly easy for kids to get caught up in a never-ending scroll and lose track of time. To combat this unproductive time, you may also want to consider 1Question, a unique parental control app that blocks recreational apps such as TikTok, and rewards children with access to recreational apps only after they have correctly answered educational questions. Once they have earned some screen time, kids then redeem that time in their favourite apps e.g. social media, games, streaming, etc. Parents can also monitor their child’s learning progress via their child’s dashboard and use that information to pinpoint their child’s strengths and weaknesses across various learning topics.
Unleash the full potential of your child’s screen time with 1Question. Get started now for free and experience the transformative power of educational screen time.
