ISLAMABAD: Popular short-video sharing platform TikTok has launched a new initiative to create awareness about how parents can monitor and control their children’s in-app experience, the company has said in a statement.

With its #FamilyFirst initiative, the platform aimed to create awareness on how parents can use ‘Family Pairing Feature’ to monitor activities on their children’s accounts including DMs, notifications, watch time and download settings.

The statement added that this was an important part of TikTok’s ongoing commitment to support and care for the safety of youths on the platform.

“With families in mind, TikTok has taken a number of steps over the past year to improve and enhance its teams, policies, controls, and educational resources,” the statement said, adding that it has strengthened its resources and partnered with leading online safety organisations.

The Family Pairing feature allows parents to link their TikTok account to their children’s and controls their activities on the app.

The feature allows parents to control screen time by setting a limit on how long their children can spend on the app each day. They have the option to set the screen time from 40 to 120 minutes.

It also allows parents to moderate content on the connected accounts and limit the appearance of content they deem inappropriate.

To provide parents with more control over conversations, the feature allows them to restrict people who could send messages to the connected account or completely turn off direct messaging, said the statement.

“TikTok also automatically disables Direct Messages for registered accounts under the age of 16,” it added.

Parents can also limit those who could like or comment on their children’s videos, choose the status of the account — private or public — and decide whether their children can search for content, people, hashtags, or sounds.

Published in Dawn, October 4th, 2022