TikTok has announced a raft of new safety and social care tools, which are designed to help ensure that users aren’t engaging in harmful behaviors in the app, while also giving creators more options to manage and maintain their presence.
First off, TikTok’s adding some new elements to its Family Pairing feature which will give parents more visibility about their teen's account.
In order to help parents better manage their experience time in the app, TikTok’s adding a new alert that will let parents know when their teen uploads a video, story, or photo that's visible to others on TikTok.
“This helps parents stay informed and start open conversations about what their teen is posting, without disrupting a teen's creativity or independence.”
So if your teens are uploading content that everybody can see, which could open them up to harmful exposure, you’ll now, at the least, be aware of it.
TikTok’s also giving parents more visibility into their teens’ privacy settings.
“For instance, parents will see if their teen (ages 16-17) has enabled downloads for their content, or if their following list is visible to others. They can also see which topics in our Manage Topics feature their teen has chosen to shape their feed.”
The idea is that this will give parents more insight into their child’s activity in the app in a non-intrusive way, enabling them to better understand how exactly their kids are using the app, and whether they could be at risk.
Which is important, considering that various studies have shown how social media platforms can impact teen mental health, and lead them down harmful rabbit holes and conceptual spirals. Having this additional insight will, at the least, provide some additional assurance on this front.
Finally, on Family Pairing at least, TikTok’s adding a new option that’ll enable parents to block specific accounts.
“We heard from parents that they know best what content is suitable for their teen, and this tool gives them another way to customize their teen's TikTok experience.”
This one seems a little more intrusive, even if it does align with parent requests, though that also comes down to application, and how parents look to implement such. Though it could lead to more angst and argument between kids and parents.
On a related front, TikTok’s also rolling out new “Well-being Missions,” which are “a series of short, engaging missions designed to help people develop long-term balanced digital habits.”
As you can see in this example, TikTok’s Well-Being Missions are focused on several elements, like managing your usage time, with challenges and badges that reward users for healthy digital behaviors.
The idea is that by gamifying well-being-related activity, that will further incentivize young users to engage in this element, and develop better habits around their use of digital tools and apps.
And that approach has already shown promise:
“In early testing, we've seen encouraging levels of interest in this new feature. With no in-app promotion, nearly 40% of people who came across the entry point chose to explore Well-being Missions. We also saw that more interactive formats, like quizzes and flashcards, were especially well received.”
It could be a handy tool to raise awareness of these elements, and get more teens engaging in TikTok’s expanded care and wellness tools.
TikTok’s also looking to take care of creators, with a suite of new tools that aim to help creators maintain the safety of their TikTok communities.
These include a new “Creator Care Mode”, which enables creators to filter out offensive and unwanted comments, and a new mute option for TikTok LIVE, which will let live creators bulk mute words, phrases and emojis.
On another front, TikTok’s also rolling out a new “Content Check Lite” option, a pre-check process that’ll let creators know whether their content is likely to be ineligible for the For You feed before they post.
While it’s also adding a new Creator Inbox which will give creators more options to control how people can contact them in the app.
Finally, TikTok’s also adding Creator Chat Rooms, a private engagement option that will enable creators to engage with specific fans and followers in a separate space.
Which leans into the popularity of messaging as a connection tool, and will give creators more options to consider for engaging their most passionate fans.
Though the requirements for such are restrictive.
Creators will need at least 10,000 followers and either a Subscription or a LIVE Fan Club to start a Creator Chat Room.
The Chat Rooms will be limited to 300 members each, so they can be fairly large, and you can create up to 20 chat rooms at once.
That could provide a range of new opportunities to interact with smaller sub-segments of your broader audience.
Some handy updates, which will give creators more ways to manage their TikTok activity and presence.
