TikTok announced a new feature Wednesday that is intended to limit scrolling time for users under the age of 18.
But the new screen time limits are pretty easy to get around.
How do TikTok’s new screen time limits for teens work?
“Every account belonging to a user below age 18 will automatically be set to a 60-minute daily screen time limit,” Cormac Keenan, TikTok’s head of trust and safety, wrote in a press release.
Once that daily screen time limit is reached, users will have to put in a password to keep scrolling, “requiring them to make an active decision to extend that time,” Keenan wrote.
As Sara Morrison writes for Vox, the screen time limits are “really more like suggestions,” because teens can still use the app by putting in the password that they set themselves.
For users under the age of 13, however, “a parent or guardian will need to set or enter an existing passcode to enable 30 minutes of additional watch time,” per a statement from TikTok.
What other new safety features did TikTok announce?
TikTok also announced a few more new features for those who use Family Pairing, which links a parent’s account to their child’s and lets them have some control over their app use.
- Custom daily screen time limits: Parents can now set custom screen time limits for their children, with options for having different limits for different days or times of the day.
- Screen time dashboard: Parents can now view how much time their child spends on TikTok, how many times they opened the app and more.
- Mute notifications: Parents can now set a schedule to mute notifications from the child’s app.