Ofcom launched an investigation into TikTok’s child safety concerns

An investigation has been launched into whether TikTok is doing enough to keep children off the platform.

The investigation by media regulator Ofcom comes a month after the UK government revealed that children under the age of 16 It will be completely banned from various platforms..

Ofcom will investigate how a video-sharing app assesses whether the user is a child and whether it has adequate systems in place to prevent children from viewing harmful content.

A TikTok spokesperson said: “We are confident that we meet our online safety law obligations and will work with Ofcom to demonstrate this.”

It follows a review by the regulator in May, which criticized the platform as “unsafe” for children and called for tougher action on children’s online safety.

Kate Davies, Ofcom’s director of strategy and research, told the BBC’s Today programme: “This is where Tiki Talk comes in. We have found that some of the age verification methods used by social media are not working well enough.”

At the heart of the inspector’s inspection of the platform is the use of technology known as “age estimation.”

This is basically based on estimating how old a user is based on how they use the platform, such as the videos they watch or others they interact with.

Davies said Ofcom had “serious doubts” about whether such devices were sufficient to check the age of users.

The regulator needs to use “highly effective” methods to ensure that social media platforms and other users are old enough to use them and to prevent children from viewing harmful content.

“We have serious questions about whether age estimation can be very effective,” she said.

But a TikTok spokesperson said: “In line with major industry peers, we strictly enforce age-relevant experiences through expert platform rules and advanced age detection technologies.”

He said the company had invested “billions” in online security since it launched in the UK eight years ago.