Are games and social media platforms safe enough for young people? - Interview with Internet Matters - video Dailymotion

More information on how to keep your children safe on online platforms

Transcript

00:00A new report is raising serious concerns about the safety of children on TikTok.

00:05A human rights campaign group says the platform is recommending sexually explicit content to

00:11accounts registered as belonging to 13-year-olds, despite TikTok's own safety features being

00:16activated. Researchers at Global Witness created fake TikTok accounts in the names of 13-year-olds

00:23earlier this year. They turned on the app's restricted mode, designed to block mature or

00:29complex themes. But within moments of setting up the accounts, researchers say they were presented

00:34with overtly sexualized search terms without entering any search terms themselves. Those

00:41prompts led to explicit material. Ava Lee from Global Witness said the team was shocked by what

00:47they found. TikTok responded by saying it has more than 50 safety features for young users and removed

00:54the offending content once notified. In a statement, the company said, we are fully committed to

01:00providing safe and age-appropriate experiences. They added that when we were made aware of this

01:06content, we took action to remove content that violated our policies and launch improvements to

01:12our search suggestion feature. The platform also claims to proactively remove 90% of guideline-violating

01:19videos before they are viewed. In terms of preparing specifically, to help their children stay safe

01:25online and particularly when they're gaming, is to play together. One of the things that is really important

01:31for parents when they're feeling a bit overwhelmed about potentially what the children might be exposed to

01:35online, is to really think about and be aware of what of those games that they're playing, why they're

01:41playing it, why they enjoy them. And as you kind of play together, as you explore with your child, you can see

01:47those potential risks, whether it may be the chat functions that are available to them and how they

01:52could potentially be approached by strangers, whether it be the types of games and how that may be

01:57impacting their mood or their emotional well-being. So that's the first really important thing for parents

02:02to kind of do with their child to kind of have that understanding. The second thing is to be able to teach

02:07a child how to kind of manage their safety. So when it comes to exposing, maybe coming across a risk or

02:13seeing something that they don't know how to deal with, just being able to report it and to block

02:18anything that might be something that may be causing harm. So being able to know where,

02:23navigating where to kind of find those tools or those features within that game.