February was not a good month for TikTok. The governments of the European Commission, Canada, and most recently the United States have ordered all of their employees to remove the social networking app from their government-owned devices due to security concerns.
Perhaps as a way to start the month of March on a fresh note, TikTok has just announced some new features designed to keep teens from watching too many viral videos. TikTok stated that in the coming weeks, users aged 18 years and younger will get a daily 60-minute screen limit by default, Teens can override that limit by typing in a passcode. Users aged 13 years and younger will have to have a parent or guardian type in a passcode to continue using the app after the limit is up.
Parents will also have extra features to keep track of their kids" use of TikTok in its Family Pairing section. Soon, those parents will be able to set their own screen time limits for their children, including different limits for different days. Also, parents will be able to see how much screen time their kids use the app, how many times the app is opened, and more. Finally, parents can decide when to mute notifications from the app on their kids" accounts.
These quality-of-life additions won"t be just for children. TikTok will allow everyone to set screen time limit limits in the coming weeks, along with when to ditch notifications and a message telling them when it"s finally time to put down that phone and sleep.
All of these new features probably won"t matter much to all those government employees who now, or soon, won"t be able to check out the latest TikTok dance craze while they are supposed to be working. It"s going to take a lot more than screen time limits to convince those governments that TikTok is not a security threat.