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TikTok safety tips should be high on every parent’s priority list if their children use the app. While TikTok can be a great place for kids and teens to find humorous or informative content or share fun videos, it’s also rife with all sorts of toxic content.
There are positives to TikTok, but they can be buried in feeds full of inappropriate content ranging from vaping and degrading humor to scantily clad men and women advertising the adult content. To say it’s a minefield would be an understatement. Today, we’re going to talk about TikTok safety tips, particularly Family Pairing, so you can ensure that your child is both safe and able to use the popular app.
What is Family Pairing?
Family Pairing is a new safety feature from TikTok designed to help parents keep their children safe while using the app. With Family Pairing, parents and teens can customize their safety settings based on individual needs.
With Family Pairing, parents can link their TikTok accounts to their teens’ accounts and set parental controls to help keep the app age-appropriate for their children.
Using this feature, parents can set daily screen time limits directly from their own accounts. This screen time limit applies to all of their teens’ devices. In addition, Restricted Mode is available to limit exposure to inappropriate content.
Parents can also decide whether or not to allow their teens to search for videos, hashtags, or LIVE on TikTok. They can also set their teens’ accounts to private if they so choose. In addition, parents can modify and limit other features like search, discoverability, account suggestions, direct message, like videos, and comments.
How to Set Up Family Pairing
- Tap Profile in the TikTok app.
- Tap the menu button at the top.
- Tap Settings and privacy, then tap Family Pairing.
- Tap Parent or Teen.
- Follow the steps in the app to link accounts.
- Once enabled, update the controls as desired.
TikTok Safety Tips
Of course, the ability to limit activity is a huge step in the right direction, but that’s only one part of TikTok safety tips. There is more to take into account than just the app itself. It’s important to communicate with your teens to help them understand why you want to monitor their activity and in some cases restrict it.
Here are some important TikTok safety tips to help you ensure that your children are on board throughout the entire process.
Help Them Understand the Rules
Teens don’t cringe at boundaries nearly as much when they understand those boundaries as well as the thinking behind them. Remember, teens, are coming into that gray area where they’re no longer fully children but not yet adults. So it’s important to treat them respectfully and help them understand, not just lay down the rules.
Talk with your teens about the dangers of TikTok, why you’re concerned about them, and why you’re taking steps to limit access to content that can be harmful to them. Be sure to make this a two-way conversation, allowing your teens to also give you their thoughts.
Trust is Key
This is one of the biggest TikTok safety tips above and beyond anything else, even Family Pairing. Your limits should be seen as your way of protecting your teens, not of your lack of trust in them.
Be sure you clearly communicate that the limits you’ll be setting – with their input – are not because you don’t trust them but because you don’t trust the technology. Rather than playing catchup, you’re being proactive and stopping issues before they start.
Privacy is Paramount
As teens transition from childhood to adulthood, their privacy becomes as important to them as ours is to us. It’s important to let them know that while certain aspects of the app may be restricted, you won’t be virtually hovering over their shoulders.
Your teen should know that you won’t be “spying” on them. Reassure them that monitoring is a term, not an action in this case. Clearly let them know that you will respect their privacy within reason, and that you’ll come to them first to discuss anything that may be concerning you before digging into their account.
TikTok Safety Tips for Online Safety and Family Harmony
These TikTok safety tips will help you implement the Family Pairing feature of TikTok with minimal turmoil. Of course, your teens may not be happy about not having full access to every part of the app. However, if you sit down and discuss what a fair level of limitations might be with your teen, chances are you’ll come to a place where you feel confident in their safety, and they feel confident in their privacy and autonomy.
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