Unfortunatelly all of us heard about the unpleasant events that saw involved the social network of the very young: TikTok. And the problem that arose is right that one: is it right to give a such powerful weapon, like a social network, in the hands of children? TikTok promptly shown its closiness to the families and decided to adopt new measures. Let’s discover together what it is.
TikTok and the very young
Maybe right because of the current stories, there was an explosion of stories and tells of unpleasant events that has as protagonist right TikTok. Between them there is the story of a mother that posed as her nine years old daughter to catch a pedophile.
Since there started the process of the people, that don’t blame the pedophile, but the mother herself. Yes, because she was conscious that her daughter, of only nine years, was using a social network.
Many said something like “My son using TikTok at nine years? Never ever”, but even “A social network? But at nine years she doesn’t need a mobile phone neither!”. All of them are good to blame her, but are we really able to keep our children away from the dangers of the web?
Everyone knows, and we always knew, that TikTok is the social network of the very young. And for very young I really mean children! Many users only are twelve, thirteen years old. But even only nine or ten.
Everyone knows but no one does nothing, not before that something striking happens. And so everyone is saying: one should do it before, but really, it isn’t so easy.
The social is asking for the age
If you have an account TikTok you noticed that the social is asking for the età. After the unpleasant events, the social network decided to act. But at the moment the best initiative seems the one to believe in the users, and we wonder if this is enough.
A simple question: when was you born? It’s clear that a kid or a teenager that doesn’t want to lose the account will say the false, saying that he’s older. And so what should one do?
TikTok and the privacy authority
At the beginning, after the death of the ten years old girl, in Palermo, the Privacy Authority threated TikTok Italia to close them.
Today, unfortunatelly, the cases became two. Another kid, another death without explanation. The cases are still opened and the connection with the social network isn’t confirmed yet.
TikTok followed anyway the suggest of the Privacy Authority and the last 9th of february asked to all the users to put their birth date, again. To all the ones that said to have less than thirteen years it closed the account. And now?
The other measures taken by the social network
TikTok knows very well that it isn’t enough. And even the Privacy Authority knows it. For this reason both said that they will continue to check the situation.
About the Privacy Authority, it claimed that it will continue to check the social network, by being sure that the measures will be enough.
TikTok, instead, knows that there are still many children on the social network, that say to be older. For this reason it said that it will do everything to check that there won’t be inappropriate contents.
The social will use a software of artificial intelligence to find dangerous contents, but even to find out the ones that seem to be published by users that have less than thirteen years.
Lastly, it was started an awareness campaign, mainly aimed to the parents, to ask them for a higher control and a correct usage of the social network.
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