It has been around two months, depending on where you live, since the world has turned to social distancing. As we stay at home (and we really hope you are!) to avoid contagion, we have started consuming online content quite a bit more.

For this reason, TikTok has sped up the rollout of new measures aimed at creating a safer experience for users of all ages. To achieve this goal, the platform is pioneering a parental control system called ‘Family Pairing’ whereby parents can link their accounts to their teen’s in order to set controls they consider appropriate. The safety options include:

“Screen Time Management: Control how long your teen can spend on TikTok each day. In addition, TikTok has partnered with top creators to make short videos that appear right in the app and encourage users to keep tabs on their screen time.

Restricted Mode: Limit the appearance of content that may not be appropriate for all audiences.

Direct Messages: Restrict who can send messages to the connected account, or turn off direct messaging completely.”

In addition to that, they are adding a new DM control:

“Starting April 30, we will be taking those protections one step further as related to younger members of our community, and automatically disabling Direct Messages for registered accounts under the age of 16.”

As many more people join and stay on social media than before, we believe these measures and the new linking mechanism are a necessary addition to the pre-existing parental controls and continue demonstrating the platform’s commitment towards safety.

Read more here.