TikTok Introduced A New One-Hour Screen Time Limit For Users Under 18 

Due to a new automatic setting that has been implemented for anyone under the age of 18, minors using TikTok will soon have a time limit placed on how long they can scroll the app.

TikTok announced it will be making "changes to help teens manage their time on TikTok"  in the upcoming weeks in a blog post that was published on Wednesday. Teens will be automatically prompted to input a passcode when they reach the 60-minute limit, even though the feature may be toggled off.

Teenagers who use TikTok will also get a weekly recap of their screen use in their app inbox. According to the blog post, the company experienced a 234% rise in the use of its screen time tools in the first month after launching the new rollout.

Cormac Keenan, head of trust and safety at TikTok, wrote in the blog post that "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 the current academic research and experts from the Digital Wellness Lab at Boston Children's Hospital in choosing this limit,"

A parent or guardian will be able to link their account to their teen's TikTok and set parental controls due to enhancements made to the Family Pairing feature, which TikTok recently revealed. With the controls, parents will be able to select videos from their child's For You Page that contain specific terms or hashtags and create a custom timetable to mute TikTok notifications.

ByteDance, a Chinese technology company, owns the app, which has found especial favour with Gen Z users. Prabhakar Raghavan, a senior vice president at Google, stated in September that nearly 40% of young people turn to TikTok rather than Google when looking for restaurant recommendations.

Despite TikTok's popularity among people born after 1996, American lawmakers who want to outright prohibit the app owing to security worries about giving China access to user data may not be satisfied with screen time restrictions. According to a  report, the US House Foreign Affairs Committee voted on Wednesday to advance a bill that would grant President Joe Biden the authority to ban TikTok.