TikTok is under formal investigation by Ofcom over whether its age checks actually keep children off the platform, in the clearest signal yet that the regulator’s online safety clampdown is moving beyond pornography sites and on to mainstream social media.
The probe will examine how the video-sharing app works out whether a user is a child, and whether its systems are adequate to stop children encountering harmful content. It lands a month after ministers confirmed under-16s will be banned entirely from a range of platforms, and follows a review in May in which Ofcom concluded TikTok was not “safe enough” for children.
“We’re confident that we meet our Online Safety Act obligations and will work with Ofcom to demonstrate it,” a TikTok spokesperson said.
At the heart of the investigation is “age inference”, technology that estimates how old a user is from how they behave on the platform, such as the videos they watch and the accounts they interact with. Instagram deploys similar tools.
Kate Davies, Ofcom’s group director for strategy and research, told BBC’s Today programme: “This is where TikTok comes in. We found that some method of age checks being used by social media are not working well enough”.
The regulator requires platforms to use “highly effective” age checks to keep children away from harmful material. Davies said Ofcom had “serious doubts” that inference tools clear that bar. “We have very serious questions about whether age inference can be highly effective,” she said.
TikTok disputes the charge. “We strictly enforce age-appropriate experiences through expert-informed platform rules and advanced age inference technologies, in line with major industry peers,” a spokesperson said, adding that the company had invested “billions” in online safety since launching in the UK eight years ago.
Enforcement moves up a gear
For any business running a platform that hosts user-generated content, the direction of travel should be unmistakable. Since the Online Safety Act’s protection of children codes took effect on 25 July last year, Ofcom has issued large fines against dozens of adult sites, enforcement ministers have publicly backed. The TikTok investigation shows social media is next in the queue, and the regime’s penalties are severe enough that Meta is already challenging Ofcom’s fines methodology in the high court.
Andy Burrows, chief executive of the Molly Rose Foundation, the charity set up by the family of Molly Russell, welcomed the investigation, criticising TikTok for “egregious failures” to prevent children from “being exposed to a tsunami of harmful content”. But he said any investigation must also deal with the site’s “blatant failure to clean up its toxic algorithms and comply with child safety duties”.
Business Matters has approached TikTok for a response.
Rebecca Smart, criminal lawyer and online safety expert at law firm Payne Hicks Beach, said the Act had clearly “made some headway” in protecting children, but warned that “the current enforcement regime may not provide a strong enough deterrent to drive full compliance”.
“There should be severe penalties for services that do not have appropriate age checks in place to protect these children,” she said. “Without stronger accountability and enforcement, children will remain vulnerable to online harms that the OSA was designed to prevent.”
For SME leaders, the story is also a reminder that children are customers earlier than ever. Rupert Lee-Browne, chairman of youth banking app nimbl, said: “The Online Safety Act is a vital step towards protecting our children from the downsides and dangers of social media – from scam ads to worse. Kids today need to learn how to stay safe online where they spend a lot of their time and that includes how to manage and protect their money. Whether they’re buying in-game or using their first payment card, children are making real financial decisions online much earlier than previous generations, and parents shouldn’t have to choose between giving their children independence and keeping them safe. Ofcom is the best agency to be regulating the platforms right now but it needs the UK government to provide the right legislation and support to enable it to succeed in protecting our kids.”
