TikTok announces blocking of beauty filters for teenagers

Published:

Nov 27, 2024 15:27 GMT

The video platform is advancing strategies to avoid concerns about the mental health of its users.

With the aim of avoiding psychological problems in its users under 18 years of age, the TikTok platform advertisement limitations on its use. Among the modifications that would be applied within a few weeks would be the impediment to apply beauty filters and blocking users less than 13 years.

These changes were revealed during the European Security Forum, which was held at its headquarters in Dublin (Ireland). “Keeping our community safe is our priority and, by the end of 2024, we will have invested almost 2,000 million euros (about 2,107 million dollars) globally in these efforts this year alone,” the platform noted this Tuesday.

Therefore, it decided that minors under 18 years of age are prevented from accessing the filters that modify the physical appearance beyond what is possible through makeup. For example, they will not be able to artificially enlarge eyes or lips, or change skin tone. Those that will remain will be those that make the images comical, such as additions of rabbit ears or a dog nose.

Another of the changes promoted by TikTok is the blocking of the accounts of those They do not reach the age of 13, For which they will use machine learning technology that will help detect profiles that do not meet the minimum required age.

“We hope this will give us the ability to detect and remove more and more quickly,” said Chloe Setter, TikTok’s head of child safety public policy, who acknowledged that these measures may be “annoying for some young people.”

According to the platform, About 6 million accounts are deleted per month around the world because they understand that they do not respect the requirements regarding the minimum age of use.