TikTok will soon limit teenage users to 60 minutes of screen time per day as part of their new wellbeing features.
In the weeks ahead, any account that belongs to a user under the age of 18 will automatically be set to a one-hour daily limit.
This is not an opt-in setting, it will be the default for accounts of that age, TikTok has announced.
“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,” Cormac Keenan, the head of trust and safety for TikTok, said.
However, users can choose to disable the limit. In that instance, teenagers who use TikTok for more than 100 minutes per day will be prompted to set a daily screen time limit for themselves.
Just as important, the limit is not a hard limit. If a teen reaches the 60-minute limit, they will see a passcode prompt which they will need to enter to continue watching – a way of forcing them to make an “active decision” to extend that time, TikTok said.
Read more: Why 13 is too young for TikTok
