Get ready for a sudden influx of TikTok users that are definitely over the age of 18: The wildly popular social media app announced on Wednesday, March 1st that it will be rolling out an automatic one-hour daily screen time limit for all users under the age of 18 in coming weeks.
Once the time limit is reached, teens will have to enter a password in order to continue using the app. This will essentially require them, as TikTok says, “to make an active decision” to extend their scrolling time. It’s worth noting that teens can opt out of the default time limit, but will then be prompted to set their own limit if they spend more than 100 minutes on the app per day.
Children under the age of 13 will also have the same time limit, with a parent or guardian required to set or enter an existing passcode to enable 30 minutes of additional watch time if the one-hour limit is reached.
In TikTok’s press release, the company said it consulted with the Digital Wellness Lab at Boston Children’s Hospital to choose the time limit. TikTok also cited research about the benefits of being more deliberate with the time we spend online. Last August, a Pew Research Center survey found 67% of teens aged 13 to 17 use Tiktok, with 16% of all teens saying they use it “almost constantly.”
The new initiative arrives the same day as the US House Foreign Affairs Committee voted to give President Joe Biden the power to ban TikTok. Later this month, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew is scheduled to testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee about the app’s privacy and data security practices and its ties to China through parent company ByteDance. The panel also plans to focus on what TikTok is doing to keep kids safe “from online and offline harms.”
