TikTok Has Been Found To Have Critical Design Discrimination Against Children, Research Says

Child protection and digital rights advocacy organizations are calling on TikTok to treat children better.

A recent Fairplay study has found that TikTok has critical "design discriminations" and discrepancies when its app is being used by children.

The TikTok app is widely popular amongst children as it offers a world that provides them with the attention they desire and a world hugely disconnected from the adult world, per Fast Company.

TikTok Design Discrimination And Discrepancy Details

TikTok was recently found by Fairplay, a nonprofit organization committed to helping children in the digital age, that it does not offer an appropriate level of protection minors need in different regions across the world.

The "design discriminations" include discrepancies in where TikTok offers an "age-appropriate" design experience to minors, such as defaulting settings to private for minors living in certain places, such as the UK and certain EU countries, while it was found to default 17-year-old users to public accounts in countries other than the previously listed ones.

"Young people aged 13-17 years based in the EEA / UK & Switzerland are offered extra protection when it comes to age-appropriate features," Fairplay wrote in its report. "This 'age appropriate experience' does not appear anywhere else in the world."

The exclusion of this "age-appropriate experience" for minors not living in the EEA, UK, and Switzerland was described by the nonprofit organization as evidence of TikTok's lack of clarity about the age-appropriateness of the product when it comes to safety and privacy.

Tech Crunch reported that the authors of Fairplay's study mentioned that many of TikTok's young users are not European and that its biggest markets are in the US, Indonesia, and Brazil. As such, children and young people living outside Europe deserve the same age-appropriate experience kids in Europe enjoy as well.

Additionally, Fairplay also found many non-European markets where TikTok was unable to provide its terms of service in young people's first language, making them unable to fully understand the consequences of their actions while using the app.

The nonprofit organization also criticized TikTok for providing young people with contradicting information sometimes, meaning that minors are more than likely to not understand whether the platform is appropriate for them to use.

Thanks to these discriminations and discrepancies, 39 child protection and digital rights advocacy organizations from 11 countries have co-signed a letter to Tiktok's CEO, Shou Zi Chew, to urge him to address the discovered inconsistencies and unfairness highlighted in Fairplay's report.

TikTok Et. Al.

TikTok is not the only social media platform Fairplay has criticized. The nonprofit organization has also studied Meta's Instagram and WhatsApp's privacy settings and differential data treatment of minors within and without Europe.

Fairplay discovered that WhatsApp is treating children in Europe much more carefully than those outside of the region as those in the former category are enjoying stronger data protections against unnecessary data sharing.

European children are also found to enjoy more clarity about data deletion and what it means t them compared to those living outside of Europe.

Meanwhile, Instagram is treating European minors better by securing their account settings to private while minors outside of the region can be found by adults, making them prone to being victims of various crimes.

Fairplay's Recommendations

Fairplay recommends that TikTok, as well as WhatsApp and Instagram, should adopt a "Child Rights by Design" and "Safety By Design" approach across their global services to maximize safety and privacy for minors globally.