On 22 January 2021, the Italian Data Protection Authority demanded that TikTok temporarily suspend Italian users whose age could not be established. Comment sections of “sexy” videos, such as young girls dancing in revealing clothes, were found to contain requests for nude pictures. In March 2023, TikTok announced default screen time limits for users under the age of 18.
This is a concern as many of TikTok’s audience are younger children, whose brains are still developing. TikTok uses popular influencers to encourage viewers to stop using the app and take a break. Vox noted in 2018 that bullies and trolls were relatively rare on TikTok compared to other platforms. In December 2023, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner announced an inquiry into TikTok’s data harvesting of Australian citizens amid allegations that it contravened Australian privacy law.
Underage users
These trends amassed popularity in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, as many people spent more time cooking at home while engaging with social media for entertainment. A viral TikTok trend known as “devious licks” involves students vandalizing or stealing school property and posting videos of the action on the platform. “Any Song” by R&B and rap artist Zico became number one on the Korean music charts due to the popularity of the #anysongchallenge, where users dance to the choreography of the song. Other creators rose to fame after the platform merged with musical.ly on 2 August 2018. This marked the company’s first instance of withdrawing its music from a major platform, in contrast to Warner Music, which had recently renewed its own licensing deal with TikTok.
YouTube Kids
TikTok said only a few individuals can approve heating in the US and the promoted videos take up less than 0.002% of user feeds. NBC reported that videos using the hashtags ‘#plasticsurgery’ and ‘#lipfiller’ had amassed a combined 26 billion views on the platform. TikTok content creators used a specific audio on their videos while showing how their noses looked before and after having their rhinoplasty surgeries. In the article, it was noted that plastic surgeons were some of the earliest adopters of social media in the medical field and many had been recognized as influencers on the platform.
The app has spawned numerous viral trends, Internet celebrities, and music trends around the world. On 19 July 2023, TikTok Music was expanded for select users in Australia, Mexico and Singapore. However, a few days later, users on Twitter discovered that the software uses code from the open-source OBS Studio. Accounts of users that are of age, have at least 100,000 followers and agree to the terms can activate a “Tip” button on their profile, which allows followers to tip any amount, starting from $1. The app expanded its parental controls feature called “Family Pairing” in September 2020 to provide parents and guardians with educational resources to understand what children on TikTok are exposed to. TikTok announced a “family safety mode” in February 2020 for parents to be able to control their children’s presence on the app.
The widespread popularity of these trends has influenced various aspects of society, including interest in cooking among younger generations, discussions about body image, the marketing of food products on social media, and temporary food shortages. Some TikTok users share personal recipes and dietary habits, while others use step-by-step cooking videos to grow their online presence. TikTok food trends refer to popular recipes and food-related fads on the social media platform TikTok.
UK Information Commissioner’s Office
In November 2023, Osama bin Laden’s 2002 “Letter to the American people” went viral on TikTok and other social media. The company stated it banned praising Hamas and removed more than 775,000 videos and 14,000 livestreams. The popularity of pro-Palestine content has also been explained by the app’s younger user base, which has shifted its sympathy away from Israel towards the Palestinians.
TikTok – Videos, Shop & LIVE
According to computer security specialist Bruce Schneier, which company owns TikTok may not matter, as Russia had interfered in the 2016 US elections using Facebook without owning it. Data collected by TikTok and other social networks can already be purchased through other means. As of February 2023, at least 32 (of 50) states have announced or enacted bans on state government agencies, employees, and contractors using TikTok on government-issued devices. 7521, which would ban TikTok entirely unless it was divested from its Chinese parent company, ByteDance.
- In July 2025, Media Matters reported that Google’s Veo 3 text-to-video model for AI-generated content is being used to generate large numbers of dehumanizing and violent videos with racist and antisemitic tropes which are being shared on TikTok.
- The popularity of pro-Palestine content has also been explained by the app’s younger user base, which has shifted its sympathy away from Israel towards the Palestinians.
- Food-related content on TikTok is often categorized under the hashtags #TikTokFood and #FoodTok.
- It reported that in the second half of 2020, over 340,000 videos in the US about election misinformation and 50,000 videos of COVID-19 misinformation were removed.
- A third party will oversee the cybersecurity policies, data flows, and personnel access independently of TikTok.
In Malaysia, TikTok is used by some users to engage in hate speech against race and religion especially mentioning the 13 May incident after the 2022 election. TikTok has since released tougher parental controls to filter out inappropriate content and to ensure they can provide sufficient protection and security. As TikTok has gained popularity among young children, and the popularity of extremist and hateful content is growing, calls for tighter restrictions on their flexible boundaries have been made. Some videos were shown to expressly promote Holocaust denial and told viewers to take up arms and fight in the name of white supremacy and the swastika.
- As the platform has grown significantly over the past few years, it has allowed companies to advertise and rapidly reach their intended demographic through influencer marketing.
- TikTok’s algorithm, recognized by The New York Times in 2020 as one of the most advanced for shaping user experiences and social interactions, stands out from traditional social media.
- ByteDance responded by adding a kids-only mode to TikTok which blocks the upload of videos, the building of user profiles, direct messaging, and commenting on others’ videos, while still allowing the viewing and recording of content.
- On 22 January 2026, US President Donald Trump and TikTok announced that the company had joined a joint venture, which will run as an independent entity while operate under defined safeguards that protect national security for US users.
- Keeping user data within the United States became the motivation behind TikTok’s Project Texas.
In January 2020, left-leaning media watchdog Media Matters for America said that TikTok hosted misinformation related to the COVID-19 pandemic despite a recent policy against misinformation. The platform has also been used to spread misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic, such as clips from Plandemic. In June 2021, TikTok made an apology after a shock video, showing a girl dancing which then cuts to a graphic scene of a man being beheaded by a saw, went viral. Concerns have been voiced regarding content relating to, and the promotion and spreading of, hate speech and far-right extremism, such as antisemitism, islamophobia, racism, and xenophobia. According to their survey, people who use TikTok more than three hours daily are significantly more positive about China’s human rights record compared to those who do not use the app.
In June 2023, TikTok confirmed that some financial information, such as tax forms and Social Security numbers, of American content creators are stored in China. In May 2023, a former ByteDance employee filed a wrongful termination lawsuit alleging that Hong Kong users’ device information and communications, particularly those of demonstrators in the 2019–2020 Hong Kong protests, were accessed by Chinese Communist Party members in 2018. Keeping user data within the United States became the motivation behind TikTok’s Project Texas. A March 2021 study by the Citizen Lab found that TikTok did not collect data beyond the industry norms, what its policy stated, or without additional user permission.
In February 2023, the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, along with its counterparts in Alberta, British Columbia, and Quebec, launched an investigation into TikTok’s data collection practices. In 2022, Turkey’s Financial Crimes Investigation Board (MASAK) initiated a probe into TikTok in relation to millions of dollars in fund transfers involving TikTok accounts that were suspected of money laundering or terrorism financing. He claimed the evidence may prove the company’s involvement in “human smuggling, sex trafficking and drug trafficking”. Paxton claimed that the Texas Department of Public Safety gathered several pieces of content showing the attempted recruitment of teenagers to smuggle people or goods across the Mexico–United States border. In February 2022, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton initiated an investigation into TikTok for alleged violations of children’s privacy and facilitation of human trafficking.
Competition from TikTok prompted Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, to spend $120 million as of 2022 to entice more content creators to its Reels service, although engagement level remained low. Although the size of its user base falls short of that of Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube, TikTok reached 1 billion active monthly users faster than any of them. In 2019, media outlets cited TikTok as the 7th-most-downloaded mobile app of the decade, from 2010 to 2019. After merging with musical.ly in August, downloads increased and TikTok became the most downloaded app in the US in October 2018, which musical.ly had done once before. On September 14, 2025, the Wall Street Journal reported the US and China have reached the “framework of a deal” for the US operations of TikTok to be sold to a consortium of investors in the US including close Trump ally Larry Ellison of Oracle. While Beijing preferred TikTok remain under ByteDance’s control, the sale could happen through a competitive process or with US government involvement.
In July 2023, Iranian Mehr News Agency reported “experts from Douyin” will meet Iranian business in Tehran to enable Iranian exports to China. It was also the most-downloaded app on Apple’s App Store in 2018 and 2019, surpassing Facebook, YouTube and Instagram. TikTok was downloaded over 104 million times on Apple’s App Store during the first half of 2018, according to data provided to CNBC by Sensor Tower.
On 21 December 2024, Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama announced that the Albanian government will shut down TikTok in 2025 for at least a year, following a deadly incident in November 2024 in which a teenager fatally stabbed another teen after a dispute that began on the platform. A Meta spokesperson defended the effort, saying that all platforms, including TikTok, should face equal scrutiny. An investigation in 2025 found that TikTok was profiting from sexual livestreams in Kenya involving minors, with teenagers as young as 15 using the platform to solicit explicit content. The Guardian website removed the ruhtinas letter after displaying it for more than 20 years, and TikTok began issuing takedowns of videos featuring the letter. US lawmakers wanting to ban TikTok accused the platform of pushing pro-Hamas and pro-Palestine content. Several former employees of the company have claimed of poor workplace conditions, including the start of the workweek on Sunday to cooperate with Chinese time zones and excessive workload.