Brussels – Thirteen-year-olds on TikTok? No, thank you. The Chinese social media platform announced today, 16 January, that it will implement a new age verification technology across the EU. The mechanism is internal to the platform and allows moderators to directly control the accounts of potential users under the age of thirteen. The decision comes during a long period of political pressure on the issue.
The European case is not isolated. In Australia, in December, a ban on social media for children under 16 was introduced.
The decision has already led to the removal of over 4.7 million accounts on 10 platforms. In the European Union, on the other hand, several states want to introduce similar legislation, while the EU Parliament itself is pushing for specific limits on social networks.
The procedure for under-13s
TikTok’s response to this political pressure came within the day.
According to the note released by the platform, a proper mechanism will be put in place to determine the profile’s true owner. This will be done by analysing “information provided by the account holder about themselves, such as profile information, videos posted and other behaviour on the platform.” After a review process, TikTok moderators will be able to suspend the minor’s account.
According to TikTok, the operation will have no commercial profiling purpose, but only to report and suspend accounts belonging to children under 13. According to the statement released, the procedure was developed in conjunction with the Irish Data Protection Commission (the country where TikTok’s European subsidiary is based), the main privacy regulatory authority in the EU.
How to appeal a ban
In any case, the mechanism could generate false positives. For this reason, TikTok provides three ways to appeal and regain access to your profile: facial age estimation by the verification company Yoti, credit card authorisation or a government-approved ID document.
Limits for other age groups
The platform owned by Chinese company ByteDance is also committed to the safety of other age groups. For example, it is not possible to use direct messages from accounts belonging to people under 16. For those under 18, there is an automatic daily limit of 60 minutes, and notifications cannot be received after a certain time at night. However, these rules can be circumvented if minors declare, when creating their profile, that they are over 18 years of age.
Union actions
Despite the progress made, there are still many obstacles to overcome before the Digital Services Act can be implemented. For this reason, governments continue to keep this issue on the agenda. To give a quick overview: on 26 November, the European Parliament approved a non-binding resolution proposing a minimum age of 16 for accessing social media, with the possibility of use between the ages of 13 and 16 only with parental consent.
The commitment of EU governments
In France, since 2023, there has been discussion of a law requiring children under 15 to obtain parental consent to access social media. There is also a deadlock on the issue in Spain and Denmark. In Italy, the legal limit for data processing (an essential element of social media use) is 14 years of age. In theory, therefore, no one under the age of 14 could access social media without parental consent.
The introduction of these rules, however, clashes with a fundamental shortcoming: until there is an effective mechanism for age verification, any law will remain easy to circumvent.
English version by the Translation Service of Withub
