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LearningTranscript
00:00Hello, my name is Amber Allitt and I'm a journalist specialising in education.
00:05Almost everyone will have heard of TikTok by now, if not be using it themselves, but
00:10for the uninitiated, it's a short form video sharing platform where people can share, create
00:15and watch videos.
00:17It's also the favoured social media platform of the younger generation, and even doubles
00:22as a creative outlet, a search engine and even a news source.
00:27But with a colossal user base of more than 1.6 billion users, its younger users can sometimes
00:33be exposed to content that they shouldn't be, or may face other risks.
00:39Safeguarding experts from high speed training have shared with us some of the dangers that
00:43children and younger teens may face when left to scroll TikTok unsupervised.
00:49Here are a few of the key ones, as well as what you can do about them.
00:53Number one is exposure to explicit content.
00:57While TikTok doesn't actually allow users to search using certain hashtags, explicit
01:02content is prevalent on the app and it's not that hard to find.
01:05To help keep an eye on this, you can set up family pairing on the app.
01:09This allows parents to have more control over what their child sees, and who they engage with.
01:16Number two is screen addiction.
01:19Social media is designed to capture and hold your attention, and it's easy to get caught
01:23in a cycle of viewing, liking and sharing.
01:27A recent parliamentary report found that one in four children with a smartphone were
01:31using it in a way that was consistent with behavioural addiction.
01:35To counter this, high speed training suggests actively encouraging a variety of hobbies
01:40to make sure that your child doesn't spend all of their free time on the app.
01:44Allow them to explore new things and find hobbies outside of TikTok, even if that's
01:48where they discovered them in the first place.
01:50Finally, there's the risk of unwanted communications.
01:54While TikTok profiles for children are automatically set to private, young people can create secret
01:59accounts, setting whatever age they wish and making their account public.
02:04This means that anyone could see their videos, access their location information, or even
02:09send them a direct message.
02:11Try to make sure that they're using an appropriate private account for children, and check in
02:16occasionally on what they're posting there as well.