Call for TikTok crackdown as eight-year-olds access explicit content

Parents have been put on notice about kids’ online safety, with experts warning children barely old enough to tie their shoes are getting access to explicit content on TikTok. Here’s how.

Children as young as eight are accessing disturbing content on TikTok — a remnant of the Covid pandemic where many parents relaxed their online safety rules to support their child’s learning and mental health.

Australia’s eSafety watchdog has warned of a cohort of pre-teens making fake profiles or using adult profiles to access harmful content on the social media platform.

The revelations come after a Daily Telegraph investigation lifted the lid on sexually explicit content being shown to teen users on the platform -- prompting TikTok to urgently ban or restrict the offending accounts.

eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant is providing a research paper on social media age verification to the federal government.

“The challenge is really that kids that are much younger than 13 are already on these platforms and we saw that reinforced in the wake of the lockdown and following Covid because we were all struggling to learn, to work, to be online,” she said.

Children as young as eight have been able to access explicit content on TikTok by making fake profiles.

“Parents use of technology was much more permissive. We started seeing kids that were eight and nine years old with their own phones or iPads using TikTok and reporting to us cyber-bullying.

Ms Inman Grant called on the platforms and parents to reinforce their own age limitation policies.

eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant. Picture: Matthew Abbott

Ms Inman Grant wants tighter restrictions to stop underage users accessing explicit content.

“We have increasingly seen companies voluntarily trying age verification technologies,” she said.

“We need to be setting parental controls, we need to be ensuring that if kids do have access to technology, they are using this technology in open areas of home. We are having open conversations.”

She said the issues that were occurring on TikTok were was a common problem.

“They need to think about not only how their platforms are being misused but also how young people who are vulnerable can circumvent the protections,” she said.

A spokeswoman for TikTok said globally more than 19 million accounts were removed over a three-month period because TikTok suspected that they belonged to underage users.

“Relying on people to be truthful about their age is a challenge that many online services and platforms face. To overcome this, we not only ask for a date of birth on sign-up, but we also use technology and sophisticated systems to determine a person’s age,” she said.