TikTok imposes sixty minutes screen time limit for teens

A widely-cited study by the Centre for Countering Digital Hate has also found that TikTok poses a significant detrimental threat to the mental wellbeing of young people.

The report states that within 2.6 minutes TikTok ‘recommends suicidal content’ and takes only 8 minutes to display videos relating to eating disorders. It also says that the app recommends videos about body image and mental health to teenagers every 39 seconds.

Most crucially, CCDH calls for a change in TikTok’s ‘opaque’ algorithm in order to protect children who, on average, spend 80 minutes a day scrolling through videos of specific, tailored content.

Speaking to the BBC, chief executive of CCDH Imran Ahmed described the app’s endless feed as the ‘crack cocaine’ of social media content. ‘It is the most addictive, the most dangerous, and the one that needs to be dealt with most urgently.’

TikTok’s introduction of a screen time prompt is likely a move to counteract some of this fierce criticism, though it remains entirely optional and can easily be bypassed. It still leaves watch times up to the individual and offers no hard restrictions. Any significant dip in engagement would hurt its own profits, after all.

Cormac Keenan, head of trust and safety at TikTok, stated that researchers had a significant hand in creating these new limits. He was quick to undermine the seriousness of screen time on mental wellbeing, however.

‘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 experts from Digital Wellness Lab at Boston Children’s Hospital.’

What happens next for TikTok in the US is anybody’s guess. We may see a full ban in some countries or, at the very least, increasingly severe restrictions for young and vulnerable users. There’ll no doubt be further research conducted and inevitable damning criticisms in the coming months.