TikTok to block teenagers from beauty filters over mental health concerns

The billion-user social media company announced the changes during a safety forum at its European headquarters in Dublin.

Teenagers are facing wide-ranging new restrictions over the use of beauty filters on TikTok amid concern at rising anxiety and falling self-esteem.

Under-18s will in the coming weeks be blocked from artificially making their eyes bigger, plumping their lips, and smoothing or changing their skin tone.

The restrictions will apply to filters — such as “Bold Glamour” — that change children’s features in a way that makeup cannot. Comic filters that add bunny ears or dog noses will be unaffected. The billion-user social media company announced the changes during a safety forum at its European headquarters in Dublin.

The effectiveness of the restrictions will depend on people using the platform under their real age, which is not always the case.

Pressure on teens

There has been widespread concern that the beauty filters — some provided by TikTok, others created by users — have resulted in a pressure on teenagers, particularly girls, to adopt a polished physical appearance with negative emotional repercussions. Some young people have described how after using filters they found their real face ugly.

TikTok also announced it was tightening its systems to block users under 13 from the platform. Before the end of the year, it will launch a trial of new automated systems that use machine learning to detect people cheating its age restrictions.

The platform already removes 20m accounts every quarter worldwide for being underage.

Chloe Setter, TikTok’s lead on child safety public policy, said: “We’re hoping that this will give us the ability to detect and remove more and more quickly.” 

People wrongly blocked will be able to appeal. “It can obviously be annoying for some young people,” said Ms Setter, but she added that the platform will take a “safety-first approach”.

The new “guardrails” around beauty filters and age verification are part of a wave of adjustments to online safety being announced by social media platforms before tougher regulations are enforced in the coming months, with potential heavy fines for breaches of online safety rules.

Last week Roblox, the gaming platform with 90 million daily users, announced it would restrict its youngest users from accessing the more violent, crude and scary content.

The Guardian