TikTok introduces 60-minute daily screen time limit under-18 users with passcode to unlock to continue watching

Social media giant TikTok has announced that it will be limiting screen time for users under the age of 18 to 60 minutes per day.

The decision comes after consultations with academic researchers and experts.

Users below the age of 18 will automatically have their accounts set to the 60-minute daily limit, after which they will need to enter a passcode to continue watching.

TikTok’s head of Trust and Safety, Cormac Keenan, stated that the decision was based on current academic research and a desire to improve the user experience.

He said: “In the coming weeks, every account belonging to a user below age 18 will automatically be set to a 60-minute daily screen time limit. ”

“While there’s no collectively-endorsed position on the ‘right’ amount of screen time or even the impact of screen time more broadly, we consulted the current academic research and experts from the Digital Wellness Lab at Boston Children’s Hospital in choosing this limit.”

“If the 60-minute limit is reached, teens will be prompted to enter a passcode in order to continue watching, requiring them to make an active decision to extend that time.”

He said: “Research also shows that being more aware of how we spend our time can help us be more intentional about the decisions we make.”

“So we’re also prompting teens to set a daily screen time limit if they opt out of the 60-minute default and spend more than 100 minutes on TikTok in a day.”

“This builds on a prompt we rolled out last year to encourage teens to enable screen time management; our tests found this approach helped increase the use of our screen time tools by 234%.”

The company has also announced that parents and guardians will be able to use Family Pairing to customise the daily screen time limit for their children.

This feature will allow them to set different time limits depending on the day of the week, which will help families take schedules and vacations into consideration.

Other changes include automatically setting the accounts of users aged between 13 to 15 to private, giving them control over what they share on the app.

Direct messaging will also only be available to users aged 16 and above while hosting a live video requires users to be at least 18.

TikTok will send every teen account a weekly inbox notification with a recap of their screen time.

A new screen time dashboard will provide a summary of usage statistics, and new settings will enable parents to mute notifications for their teens during the night.