TikTok Will No Longer Allow Teenagers to Use Beauty Filters
TikTok filters can be a fun way to interact with the app, acting like digital face paint that can make you look like a clown or a tiger, for example. But effects designed to enhance a user’s beauty are more challenging, as TikTok itself now admits.
Following more than a dozen lawsuits targeting the platform over its impact on teenage mental health, as well as research conducted in collaboration with London-based non-profit Internet Matters, the company now says that “in the coming weeks” users will be those under 18 years, will not be able to use “certain appearance-altering effects.”
While the company says it won’t target effects “intended to be obvious or funny,” it will limit effects “intended to change your appearance” in an effort to ease concerns “that those viewing content may not realize that it has been changed.”
In other words, teens on TikTok will still be able to wear digital animal ears to their hearts’ content, but will likely not be able to use beauty filters once those age restrictions are in place (goodbye Bold Glamour). While the news was announced at the company’s European Safety Forum , TikTok’s head of public policy for safety and wellbeing in Europe, Dr. Nikki Su, told The Verge that the restrictions “will be rolled out globally.”
The company will also work to provide more information about how the effect can change a user’s appearance, although it is not specified whether the burden here will fall on TikTok or the effect creators. The latter, however, will see new guidance informing them of some of the unintended consequences their consequences may have.
As for even younger users, TikTok said it is working on new “machine learning technology” that will prevent users under 13 from being on the platform, although details remain unclear. It’s possible that the technology will also be used to prevent users under 18 from lying about their age, although the company hasn’t said whether this will be the case.
In Europe, TikTok also plans to launch in-app resources “in 13 European countries” that will connect users with local helplines on issues such as “suicide, self-harm, hate and harassment.”
According to a TikTok report for Internet Matters, “the embellishment of filters has contributed to a distorted worldview in which ideal images are normalized” and can lead to “significant social pressure” to “look a certain way online.” The upcoming restrictions on said filters join previous restrictions TikTok has put in place in an attempt to get ahead of criticism, including limiting screen time to a default of one hour per day for users ages 13 to 17.