Italy Requests TikTok To Block Users With Unverified Age

According to the Italian Data Protection Agency, although TikTok has previously committed to banning children under the age of 13 from registering to use the platform, many young users can still “bypass” the regulation easily. Therefore, the agency has required TikTok to block unverified user accounts with a deadline of February 15.

Commenting on this request, the representative of the company announced that it was trying to prevent “young” accounts and following the regulations. The representative also affirmed that TikTok always developed and strengthened policies and technologies to protect its user community in general and young users in particular.

In TikTok’s terms of service, a user must be 13 years old or more in order to sign up for an account. In the US, the platform has a version for childer under 13 called TikTok for Younger Users. The app is designed to limit the interaction and content available to those young users.

As its popularity skyrocketed, TikTok has been adding more privacy controls targeting accounts of younger users. With that, remote parental controls were introduced, allowing parents to change the privacy settings for their kids on the app. The default privacy settings for accounts of users from 13 to 15 years old were also updated, putting limits on who can view and comment on these accounts’ videos.

On January 20, a 10-year-old girl in Palermo, Italy was found dead in the bathroom after trying a famous challenge on TikTok called the “Blackout Challenge.”

Accordingly, participants of the challenge must perform actions that make themselves suffocate, causing temporary fainting. The dangerous challenge has been viral on social platforms, especially on TikTok, since 2020.

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