TikTok is known for its young, viral dance craze-loving users. However, you must still pretend to be at least 13 years old to use it.TikTok, a viral video app that gained popularity during the pandemic surge, published its first transparency report for 2021 on Wednesday. This report includes the first three months of the year.These reports, which provide details about how TikTok deals with different forms of policy-breaking content in the past, have been published before. However, this was the first time they were released.TikTok states in its report that they are publishing for the first time the number of accounts we suspect were underage. This is to ensure that the TikTok experience remains accessible to people aged 13 and older.It is eye-opening to see how many accounts were removed.One-third of the 11,149,514 accounts that were removed because they violated the service's community guidelines, or terms and conditions, was "suspected underage" accounts.It is important to stress the word "suspected". It's impossible to determine how many people under 13 used the service, or if they still do. These accounts are created by users who willingly provided their birthdate and identified themselves as being 12 years or younger when they signed up for the service.Although it may seem high, TikTok says that this number is less than 1% of all registered users. TikTok also explained that users younger than 12 years old can sign up to a curated version of its platform, TikTok For Younger Users.Although users aged 13 and older are permitted to use TikTok, special settings were made available for users under 18 years old earlier in the year. Users between the ages of 13 and 15 have their account default set to private. There are also restrictions on who can download videos and engage in their content. Similar settings are available for users aged 16-17.
