TikTok announced that the platform’s audience controls feature will be expanded, allowing creators to restrict their videos to adults-only audiences.
Creators will be able to prevent under-18 users from viewing their short-form videos if they believe they are inappropriate for younger audiences.
This tool, known as audience controls, is part of a larger effort to enforce TikTok’s policies against sexually suggestive content. The community guidelines on TikTok forbid nudity, sexual activity, and sexually explicit content. Sexually suggestive content is already prohibited from being included in FYP recommendations.
Creators will now be able to restrict “borderline” suggestive content that does not violate community guidelines from being viewed by adolescent audiences.
Audience controls were first tested for TikTok LIVE earlier this year, and the feature is now available to creators for short-form videos. It will be made available globally in the coming weeks.
TikTok announced a content maturity ranking system in July, with the goal of preventing inappropriate content from reaching teenage users. “As we’ve identified content as sexually suggestive or explicit, we’ve prevented teen accounts from viewing over 1 million overtly sexually suggestive videos in the last 30 days alone,” TikTok said in a press release on Friday.
However, TikTok has yet to provide a method for users’ ages to be verified. You must currently be 13 or older to use the full version of the app, but it does not verify your age when you sign up.
TikTok has come under fire from lawmakers, parents, and mental health experts for exposing children to potentially harmful content on their FYPs. “Our goal has always been to ensure that our community, particularly our teen users, have a safe, positive, and joyful experience when they visit TikTok,” the company wrote. “We’ve already taken significant steps to ensure their feeds are full of content that is appropriate for them, and these enhancements represent an important next step toward that goal.”
