TikTok announced it will establish a youth council that will be tasked with creating safety tools that are more effective for its younger users.
In a blog post shared with NBC News on Monday and published on Tuesday, TikTok said the council, which will comprise teenagers, will provide the company with feedback from younger users about their experiences with TikTok, as well as help the company avoid building safety tools that are “ineffective or inadequate.”
TikTok’s global head of product policy, Julie de Bailliencourt, said the company planned to launch the council in the next few months but did not give a specific date.
“It’s still very early stages, but, again, our goal is that we keep designing really effective products and policies that protect young people but also enable them to find a voice,” de Bailliencourt said. “And we absolutely need to listen intently to what young people have to say about this.”
Social media platforms have been scrutinized in recent months over their impact on teen mental health. In response to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report about an increase in sadness among young girls, several teenagers told NBC News this year that they felt social media was partly to blame for their peers’ declining mental health.
TikTok, and its Chinese-owned parent company, ByteDance, continue to face scrutiny from lawmakers. In March, TikTok launched a charm offensive after lawmakers called for it to be banned, citing national security concerns. CEO Shou Zi Chew told Congress that the platform is safe and secure for teenagers and other users and that it won’t be accessed or influenced by the Chinese government.
The council is the brainchild of Cormac Keenan, the head of trust and safety at TikTok, who suggested it a couple of months ago, de Bailliencourt said.
“We thought, ‘This is a brilliant idea,’” she said. “It’s a lot of work to get to this point. But we think it will make a meaningful difference to our approach.”
In addition to tools they might find useful, de Bailliencourt said TikTok hopes to discuss issues like well-being, digital literacy and safety with the youth council.
De Bailliencourt said that some of the details will come together in the coming weeks and that TikTok is consulting with experts about how to best protect the teens on the council. She said the company expects to have various countries and communities represented on the council.
“I don’t think we have deployed yet all of the great ideas that could be deployed to make TikTok safe, because all these ideas are still yet to be heard or are being worked on,” she said.
TikTok said it has developed tools in the past with the consultation of teens, such as a “tips for caregivers” section that is accessible within the platform’s family pairing feature.
The blog post also announced a new feature in family pairing that allows parents to add content filters to their teen’s account. That means parents can filter out words and hashtags their children see and teens can see what words their parents have selected to filter out. However, the app does not filter out images.
“Our work is never over in this space,” de Bailliencourt said. She said the company hopes the youth council will be another way to improve the experiences of the app’s youngest users.
“It’s a race to the top when it comes to creating safety online,” she said.
