TikTok is launching new features focused on teen, family, and community well-being today. According to the company, these updates will include greater screen time controls with new defaults for teen accounts and expanded controls in Family Pairing.

Starting soon, every account under 18 will automatically establish a 60-minute daily screen time limit. Once the 60-minute mark is reached, teens will be prompted to enter a passcode to continue scrolling. For users of TikTok's under-13 experience, the daily screen time limit will also be set at 60 minutes. If the screen time limit is reached, a parent or guardian will need to set or enter an existing passcode in order to enable 30 more minutes of watch time.

In its application, the app will suggest teens set a daily time limit for screen use once they disable the 60-minute default and spend above 100 minutes on the app in a day. In the first month the firm tested the approach, the company saw that it improved the use of its own screen time management tools to be 234%. The second announcement is that TikTok would send every teen account inbox a weekly notification of recapping their screen time.

TikTok is working on new features for the Family Pairing tool. This allows a parent to link their own account with that of a teen of theirs to be able to turn on certain content and privacy settings for the teenager. Most importantly, the company said it's just beginning the process of coming up with a way in which it will allow caregivers the ability to filter videos with certain words or hashtags they feel their teens should not see. In designing this, TikTok is working alongside parenting, youth, and civil society organizations.

With Family Pairing, caregivers can also set custom limits on the teen's daily screen time use, including different time limits for various days of the week. For instance, you could give your teen more access to screen time during weekends and holidays but limit the screen time during weekdays.

The company is bringing its screen time dashboard to Family Pairing. The dashboard contains information on how many hours a teen spent inside the app during the night and day and how often they opened the app, among other statistics. As such, TikTok says caregivers will be able to coach their teens with this in hand.

TikTok also rolls out a new feature wherein users can schedule their times by muting the teen user's notification. To your notice, accounts for accounts of users aged 13-15 don't come with push notifications past 9 pm and those coming from users aged 16 to 17 come without pushing notifications past 10 p.m. TikTok shares that it knows well that notifications ensure people are in the connective cycle; however, there are moments in times when they want to stay isolated.

According to TikTok, it wants all of its users to feel in control of their experience on the app, which is why everyone is being given the power to set their own custom screen time limits for every day of the week as well as set a schedule for muting notifications. Another sleep reminder, this time rolling out for the users to remind themselves to put the app down and go to bed.
"As the company outlined in its blog post, "We'll continue to invest in improving our current features as well as introducing new tools to help people stay in control as they express their creativity, make meaningful connections, and enjoy culture-defining entertainment.".

A recent report stated that TikTok is actually the social application that most teenagers and children spend a greater part of their time. Even surpassing YouTube. No surprise there since many kids and teens adore it.

It's been over a year since the heads of social media platforms popular, among them, TikTok testified before congress about all the nasty things they could unleash on their young users. And after all that hounding, minor safety-related updates have emerged. Here is a litany of new features being rolled out today to assuage the lawmakers.