To make TikTok kid-friendly, use the Family Pairing feature to link your account to your child's, allowing you to control screen time, enable Restricted Mode, manage direct messages, and set privacy settings like making their account private. For children under 13, TikTok offers a separate, age-appropriate experience with private accounts and limited features, notes the TikTok support page.
First of all, take access to your kids' phone and open TikTok. Go to Profile and then tap three dots ``...'' at the top right corner. Now select Digital Wellbeing and then tap Restricted mode. You will be asked to confirm a password. This will prevent your child from by-passing the system.
However, for people under 13 years old in the U.S., we have a separate TikTok experience specifically designed for younger people. Important things to know about this experience: All accounts are private. Videos can be created but not posted.
As a parent or guardian, you can use Family Pairing on TikTok to customize safety settings for your teen based on individual needs. Everyone on TikTok, including your teen, can unpublish their account by deactivating or permanently deleting their account.
This is up to you as their parent or guardian. Like any social media site, TikTok might not provide the right content if you don't follow its age restrictions. However, it can be a place for kids to interact and share videos with friends. As a parent, you'll need to weigh up the pros and cons.
Restricted Mode on TikTok limits exposure to content that may not be comfortable for everyone, such as content that contains mature or complex themes. Some features are unavailable if you use Restricted Mode, including access to the Following feed, going LIVE, and gifting on LIVE.
The TikTok 3-second rule is a content strategy emphasizing that you must hook a viewer within the first three seconds of a video to prevent them from scrolling away, significantly impacting watch time, completion rates, and algorithmic favorability for the For You Page (FYP). This rule highlights the need for immediate visual impact, strong curiosity gaps (questions/mysteries), fast cuts, emotional triggers, or bold text to stop the scroll and signal video quality to the algorithm, though some suggest the attention span is shrinking to even one second.
How to turn on Restricted Mode on TikTok
You can customise your teen's content with parental controls on TikTok through Family Pairing. This includes filtering keywords, using the STEM feed feature and turning on Restricted Mode. Teens can customise certain content in their app as well.
6 Tips to Keep Kids Safe on TikTok
TikTok accounts are available for people at least 13 years old (or other ages as indicated in our Privacy Policy and Terms of Service). To safeguard your experience, we have default privacy settings for features based on your age and some features may not be available to you until you turn 16 or 18.
Here's what you do:
Yes, TikTok will ban accounts if they discover the user is under 13, as their minimum age is 13 for a standard account, but they provide a separate, safer experience for U.S. users under 13; however, if you're 13, you might face restrictions or account deactivation in places like Australia due to new laws for under-16s, requiring age verification with IDs, which can lead to bans if you can't prove your age, even if you're 13.
Whether to let your 12-year-old have TikTok involves weighing creative benefits against risks like inappropriate content, cyberbullying, and mental health impacts, despite the official 13+ age limit. You can enable safer use by setting up Family Pairing for parental controls (screen time, content filtering), enforcing rules (no devices in bedrooms), discussing online behavior, and encouraging real-world activities, but remember kids can easily bypass age checks, so supervision and communication are key.
To turn Restricted Mode on or off:
What is the Social Media Ban? The Australian Government is proposing laws to introduce a minimum age for access to social media. The proposed laws will require technology companies to restrict individuals under the age of 16 years from accessing their social media platforms.
Who can send direct messages on TikTok. Direct messaging on TikTok is available to: Registered account holders aged 16 and older. Parents and guardians can set restrictions on this feature through Family Pairing.
Depending on how you've chosen to confirm your date of birth, we'll share the information you submit with our service providers, who help us check if your ID is authentic, estimate your age from your selfie, or allow our appointed service providers to make a temporary credit card authorization.