Teens love being online, both for entertainment and social interaction. While the internet does have a lot of educational, inspirational, and enjoyable content to offer its users, it isn’t always a safe space to be. Abuse from digital predators, cyberbullying, and identity theft are among the dangers that teens and their parents need to be wary of online. And, because most teens have their own phones and computers for browsing, it can be difficult for parents to monitor their internet use, placing them at greater risk compared to smaller children.

Despite the challenges, with proper guidance and open communication, parents can help keep teens safe as they browse the internet and social media. Engaging in regular conversations about online safety is a good place to start. Some things to talk about are the websites that your teens visit, the people that they interact with on social media, and the content that they post and share.

The responsibility of keeping teens safe online does not only fall on their parents. This is shared by the different apps and websites that teens frequent, too. For this reason, TikTok has made a commitment to do their part, and provide parents with tools they can use to boost their teens’ safety on the platform.

The app has extensive privacy settings in place, all of which are easy to navigate and control. Plus, through the new Family Pairing feature, additional security settings can be customized by both teens and parents, based on their individual needs.

This value-added security feature allows parents to link their own accounts with the accounts of their teens, and set up the following control measures:

Screen Time Management, to control the amount of time that teens can spend on TikTok each day,

Restricted Mode, to filter out inappropriate content, and

Direct Messaging Controls, which limits who can send private messages to a teen’s account or disables the direct messaging feature completely. Direct Messaging is not available for users under 16 years of age.

Users of all ages can look forward to a safe, positive, and welcoming environment as they creatively express themselves on TikTok. Experience this for yourself. Download TikTok on your TikTok on your iOS or Android device today.