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Abstract

TikTok's global popularity among children has sparked intense debate worldwide. Some argue that the platform's algorithmic design leads children down a rabbit hole of compulsive content consumption and encourages the imitation of socially harmful behaviours. Others highlight its positive role as a space for children to express their voices on social issues and engage in socialization. This Special Issue on TikTok and Children arises within this context as an attempt to explore the complicated issues surrounding the presence of children on TikTok, their usage of the app, and the cultures they partake in and proliferate on the platform. By showcasing a range of topics, methodologies, and disciplinary framings on how to study children and TikTok, the Special Issue provides a meaningful opportunity to think about balanced and practical approaches to maximise children's rights and agency, and to leverage on the range of platform cultures for positive child development.

Keywords

TikTok children social media digital child social media ban

Introduction

Children are all over the popular short-video app TikTok. They share dances, build and participate in all sorts of communities, find allies, promote products, become influencers, go down dark rabbit holes not intended for them, confront bullying, deal with misinformation, and experience video consumption within the endlessly scrolling For You landing page. While algorithmic feeds are now common on social media, TikTok operates its uniquely successful For You algorithm which provides videos to users via their For You Page (FYP), tailored to each user based on many signals including their digital footprints and geolocation data (Kaye et al., 2022; Zulli and Zulli, 2020). Notably the tools and affordances which can make the platform engaging and enabling for many can also amplify risks and harm for others. Childhood encompasses the period from birth to late-teenhood, and this full spectrum of age groups are present on TikTok in one way or another: From babies and toddlers who might feature in family influencer content, to maturing teens on the cusp of adulthood. Our use of the terms “child” and “children” are intended to signal the full spectrum of ages, mostly consistent with legal understanding of childhood as people under the age of 18, while “teens” and “youths” specifically signal teenagers, noting that age is not a signal of the same ability or maturity for all children (Livingstone and Sylwander, 2025). For several years, the most followed person on TikTok was a child, teenager Charli D'Amelio who gained that status at just 15-years-old (Chung, 2020). While younger children are not technically allowed to hold TikTok accounts, political discussions about the impact of the platform on 13 to 15-year-olds has been central in Australia – where the Special Issue editors are based – legislating a ban on children under 16-years-old having social media accounts (Sullivan, 2024).

This Special Issue on TikTok and Children arises within this broader context as an attempt to explore the complicated issues surrounding children's presence, usage, and culture on the app. It features a selection of peer reviewed papers that were initially presented at a symposium organised by the TikTok Cultures Research Network (TCRN)¹ in collaboration with the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child.² The symposium was organised by Professor Crystal Abidin, Dr Jin Lee, and Professor Tama Leaver, all from Curtin University on Boorloo, the lands of the Whadjuk Noongar peoples, also known as Perth, Western Australia after colonisation. The TCRN is particularly focused on highlighting the scholarship of underrepresented scholars working mostly on or in the Global South. The Digital Child Centre is focused on research that helps build healthy, educated and connected digital childhoods for children from birth to eight in Australia and beyond. The ethos of both are evident in the papers selected in this Special Issue, which explore TikTok's global impact as an app, a platform, and a cultural phenomenon in relation to children's digital engagement.

From Douyin and Musical.ly to TikTok

Unlike most of the major social media platforms and companies, TikTok's parent company ByteDance is based in China which has, at times, proven controversial and challenging in terms of TikTok's use in different countries. TikTok has a slightly complicated ancestry: The original version is the Chinese app Douyin which launched in September 2016, while a separate English-language version of that app was launched as TikTok a year later. In November 2017, ByteDance purchased the popular short video app Musical.ly and merged the two. When ByteDance purchased Musical.ly and integrated that app and audience into TikTok, this integrated the large teen and pre-teen user base which had predominantly used Musical.ly for music, lip-synching and dance-related cultures (Savic, 2021). This playful aspect further shapes the broader culture of the platform, as the imitation of other users’ content is facilitated by its technological features, such as AI-powered filters (Kaye et al., 2022) and is encouraged by the unique For You algorithm (Zulli and Zulli, 2020). In this way, TikTok's memetic playful culture has deeply resonated with young people, playing a key role in fostering engagement with a wide range of content and playful experiences available on the app (Abidin, 2021).

The question of the role, impact and appropriateness of social media for children has also become more and more topical over the last decade. In particular, TikTok is emblematic of an algorithmic amplification, which on the one hand can locate and build community, but on the other hand can rapidly push young people into darker corners of the platform. Indeed, Bhandari and Bimo (2022) argue that while older social media was constructed around the “network self”, on TikTok the experience of self-fashioning and identity building is better as an “algorithmized self”. This shift is primarily driven by the affordances of the platform, in which the For You algorithm serves as the most central feature in mediating and directing user interactions and behaviours (Bhandari and Bimo, 2022).

This algorithmic operation of TikTok introduces a new mode of digital engagement for children, reshaping how they interact with media, one another, and society more broadly. Education scholars highlight that in addition to TikTok's omnipresence across children's daily lives, the interconnectivity that children forge through TikTok — whether through talking about TikTok content with their friends, participating in the creation of viral trends, or simply consuming content on the platform — provides a novel way for children to build relationships and engage in various communities (Pomerantz and Field, 2021). This emerging form of TikTok-driven connection and network allows young people to challenge traditional adult-child hierarchies by creating relational networks beyond conventional structures (Pomerantz, 2024).

Recognizing its creative and educational potential, many educators also have begun to integrate TikTok as a pedagogical tool, leveraging its interactive and creative features to enhance children's engagement in education settings (e.g., Sudarmanto, 2023). However, this shift often sparks tensions between children and adults who are unfamiliar with these new modes of engagement and find TikTok incomprehensible and strange (e.g., Pomerantz and Field, 2021). TikTok’s algorithmic content recommendations complicate the perceived obscurity around the platform, as the research has noted that it may randomly suggest “inappropriate” material to children beyond their comprehension or maturity level; this presents challenges among educators who must be thoughtful about the use of TikTok in education (Larsen, 2023).

Kaye et al. (2022) note that the For You algorithm is particularly powerful for three reasons: It immediately locates users within the logics of content discovery, offering an endless mix of material, centralising taste signals more than most other platforms; these signals are highly and very successfully personalised, delivering content that consistently appeals to users, keeping them on the platform; and thus every piece of content of the platform is most meaningful when understood in terms of its potential spreadability, incentivising content creators to always operate in ways which make their content most appealing to potential viewers. TikTok is not the only platform deploying algorithms and endless feeds to try and keep users’ attention, but it is one of the most successful platforms and apps in terms of these dynamics.

Specifically, amidst the social distancing measures imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic, children increasingly turned to TikTok as their virtual playground to connect with peers and socialise (Bresnick, 2019). US teenager Charli D'Amelio rose to stardom on TikTok for her dances and dance covers. However, the dance that first propelled D’Amelio's fame, “The Renegade”, was not created by her, but by a Black American teen Jalaiah Harmon whose work and authorship was largely uncredited (Boffone, 2022). D'Amelio is an icon of online success, but she has also publicly discussed wrestling with an eating disorder; this highlights that while her fame can provoke her body dysmorphia, her audience has also provided vital support during challenging moments (Chung, 2020). The double-edged sword of TikTok – as both a tool of support for online communities and as a site which can continue to perpetuate harmful messages – are emblematic of the ways the platform and its associated cultures are publicly perceived.

Communities of interest, activism, and support

There are many communities of interest on TikTok which directly engage children, and which are often centred on a shared culture cemented by a shared hashtag. For instance, #BookTok or “BookTokers” are TikTok creators whose content and communities focus on the reading of physical books, providing a contrast to the generational stereotypes which suggest TikTok users only consume video content (Dezuanni et al., 2022). Indeed, #BookTok is especially important for children as it can either ignite or rekindle a shared interest in reading and literacy for teens (and others), as BookTokers discuss, promote, and explore novels on the platform (Dezuanni et al., 2022). #BookTok also introduces new voices and new tastemakers, and anchors a new generation of readers and reviewers, harnessing the algorithmic intensity of the platform to promote traditional literacies and a shared passion for reading (Reddan et al., 2024). Beyond #BookTok, there are other examples of children who form and develop productive peer cultures of support on the platform (Sarwatay et al., 2023).

TikTok can also provide a critical sense of community, camaraderie and connection for young people with disabilities, such as the TikTok autism community, colloquially known as #AutiskTok (Alper et al., 2023). For young people who have been recently diagnosed as neurodiverse, TikTok's features allow them to seek and find a shared community even across disparate geographic regions, which is especially important for users in smaller and rural communities (Alper et al., 2023). TikTok can also provide a space where young people with disabilities can collectively explore and share new tools and technologies, such as the instance of TikTok's autism community working together to test out the utility of ChatGPT as a diagnostic and communication-enhancing tool, in ways that are very specific to that community (McNally et al., 2024).

TikTok's culture of creating and spreading memetic content further enables children to develop and engage with their own politics. Memetic content on TikTok – which involves the sharing of common content templates or messages nestled under a hashtag, audio template, or community vernacular – serves as a vehicle for children's collective political expression (Literat and Kligler-Vilenchik, 2019), thanks to the platform's affective affordances (Macnaughtan and Trott, 2024). The growing prevalence of TikTok content that focuses on various social issues and social movements (Lee and Abidin, 2023) – including topics such as climate change (Hautea et al., 2021) and LGBTQ + identity politics (Duguay, 2023) – not only raises children's awareness of social issues, but also encourages them to participate in collective actions or even lead social movements themselves (Literat and Kligler-Vilenchik, 2021). TikTok also provides an outlet for young people to engage with content around war and conflict. In the wake of the Russian invasion of the Ukraine in 2022, TikTok facilitated the publicity of new voices that would otherwise not have been visible enough to be captured in the traditional news cycle. These instances have highlighted the experiences of the front line, inside the country, and the voices of Ukrainians who found themselves suddenly fleeing as refugees (Marino, 2024), personalising conflict in a very immediate way for TikTok's users.

Amplified risks

The same affordances or tools on TikTok that can build positive communities and amplify meaningful connections, and positive content can also be used to promote disinformation and amplify harmful content, especially if a young person actively seeks out problematic material. For children who may lack sufficient media literacy or content monitoring skills, this can result in addictive consumption of “rabbit-hole”-like content suggested by the algorithm, leading to hedonistic content consumption cycles and socially disruptive behaviours (e.g., Lavi, 2023).

As with most social media platforms, there are persistent concerns about the impact of visual social media on young people, pertaining especially to body image. Scholarship has uncovered specific types of images, videos and experiences that can exacerbate body dysmorphia and potentially lead to, or amplify, disordered eating and related illnesses (Pryde and Prichard, 2022). While TikTok has introduced Community Guidelines which explicitly state that they “do not allow showing or promoting disordered eating and dangerous weight loss behaviours, or facilitating the trade or marketing of weight loss or muscle gain products” (TikTok, 2024), these guidelines may be reactive and slow to respond to changes on the ground; more crucially, it is not always in the platform's best interest to strongly enforce these guidelines at the risk of alienating the content creators (i.e., beauty TikTokers, wellness TikTokers) who no doubt generate traffic and profits for the company. Scholars are evidencing studies that demonstrate how despite the guidelines, such content continues to circulate on TikTok (Blackburn and Hogg, 2024).

Health misinformation and disinformation has also found wide audiences among young people on TikTok. Many health issues, illnesses, and contentious lifestyle choices are present in TikTok content, and discussed by the communities who are interested in them (Sattora et al., 2024). Misinformation and disinformation are also prevalent in TikTok content across many health domains, raising concerns among medical and health professionals (Dubin et al., 2024; Patel and Thakur, 2024). Similarly, despite national laws and TikTok's own Community Guidelines that aim to prevent content which markets e-cigarettes or vaping, such content continues to circulate on the platform (Jancey et al., 2023). Given the prevalence of health misinformation on TikTok, increasing pressure is applied to health professionals and communicators to provide alternative, credible voices on the platform to try and provide important, evidence-based correctives (Kirkpatrick and Lawrie, 2024). As such, the ambiguous reliability of health information on TikTok can stir up in users a general scepticism about all health information online.

The rights of child influencers on TikTok and social media more broadly are also being widely debated by scholars and news commentators, especially in the context of an increasing number of young children being groomed into internet celebrity through family influencer units. As Abidin (2023) notes, child influencers became even more popular and visible during the COVID-19 lockdowns, but this was also accompanied by subsequent community backlash and legislative interest in the phenomenon. Specifically, some nations are signalling their refreshed focus on the rights of the child, with intentions to improve legislations to protect young children who may be commercially embroiled on TikTok or other social media (Edwards, 2024; Joss, 2023). The way that ByteDance collects the private information of children has also been interrogated by lawmakers. In 2024, with a potential ban of TikTok already circulating, the US Department of Justice sued TikTok for “unlawfully collecting children's data and failing to respond when parents tried to delete their children's accounts” (Sherman, 2024).

ByteDance continues to explore ways to integrate generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools into TikTok and Douyin (Lanz, 2024; Onome, 2024), presenting children with new creative, translation, and simulation opportunities, along with the new potential risks that come with the emerging generation of all AI tools. Notably, TikTok was one of the first platforms to proactively adopt transparency tools, indicating to users where content is AI-generated by stipulating the use of specific labels in posts (ByteDance, 2024). However, the collection of papers in this Special Issue collectively note that TikTok users are not satisfied with the status quo, creatively circumventing platform guidelines and features to continue perpetuating harmful contents, taking the initiative to impose grassroots-led practices that hold each other more accountable, and are calling upon TikTok to consider more nuanced and stringent regulation.

Bans

Despite TikTok being extremely popular with young people at the time, in 2020 the Indian government completely banned the platform in the country, ostensibly along national security lines, as the relationship between the Indian and Chinese governments deteriorated (Madhok, 2024). At the time of writing, this ban has been in place for four years, with no signs of it being lifted (Kumar and Thussu, 2023). At the time of writing, the US has also enforced legislation that is pressuring TikTok to sell its US operations to another company outside of China or be banned from the American market altogether (Kerr, 2025). Concurrently, more than a dozen states in the US are suing TikTok on the basis that the that the product is designed to be addictive for children, arguing that TikTok “is damaging children's mental health with a product designed to be used compulsively and excessively” (Bhuiyan and Robins-Early, 2024).

In late-November 2024, the Australian government rushed through legislation to ban young people under 16-years-old from having social media accounts across platforms, including TikTok (Sullivan, 2024). The legislation does not specify how the ban will be implemented but rather pushes that responsibility onto platforms themselves; instead, the government is threatening significant fines to companies that do not actively prevent under-16 s from using their platforms, beyond weak age-gating efforts (Sullivan, 2024). Despite criticisms from experts that the decision reflects an adult-centric view, with children's perspectives largely absent and poor consideration of social media's positive role in at-risk youths (Rodriguez et al., 2024; Wilson, 2024), the ban itself gained widespread support beyond Australia, reinforcing the moral panic discourse that social media exacerbates mental health issues and disruptive social behaviours in children (Stokel-Walker, 2025). Within weeks of it being legislated, Australia's law banning under-16 s from social media was being discussed as a possible model in other countries, such as Canada and the UK (Forrest, 2024). Although the ban is concerned with a range of social media – including Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, X, and TikTok (Sullivan, 2024) – it has fuelled ongoing controversies that TikTok exacerbates mental health issues and disruptive social behaviours in children (Stokel-Walker, 2025). Indeed, in response to the bans by the Australian and the US governments, many parents welcomed the move, believing that it would also safeguard children from exposure to harmful content (Grothe, 2025; Tuohy, 2024).

Amidst these ongoing discussions surrounding the app, children's voices remain largely absent. When the Australian and US governments announced bans, some adolescents publicly claimed their right to use the platform, emphasising its crucial role in their peer cultures (AFP 2024; The Learning Network, 2023). Yet, as is often the case, children's own perspectives and experiences have been sidelined, with decisions about their cultures and practices around the platform made predominantly by adults.

This Special Issue

The articles in this Special Issue reveal both the opportunities TikTok can provide for young people, while also outlining the risks and challenges children must navigate as TikTok users. In “Mediated Parental Absence: Parasocial Relationships between Children and their ‘TikTok Parents’”, Jacob Smith and Emily Mendelson (2024) examine the TikTok presence of Alex and Melinda Griswold who styled themselves as “TikTok's parents”, building parasocial kinship with young TikTok users drawn to their relentlessly positive parenting personas. While these personas provided them with monetisation opportunities by commodifying their parasocial family relationships within the influencer economy, they also raise ethical concerns. Adolescent audiences who engaged with them as “adopted children” felt confused and even abandoned when the couple abruptly announced their divorce and left the platform, revealing their intimacy as merely a follower-followee relationship rather than a true familiar connection. By pointing out the limitations of digital relationships that offer a sense of belonging, but that remain transactional and one-directional within the influencer economy, this article highlights the need to consider children in TikTok cultures, who turn to TikTok in search of care to fill the emotional gaps in their lives.

“Where are all the Black Girls on TikTok?: Exploring niche community and erasure through #BlackGirlTikTok” by Zari Taylor and Crystal Abidin (2024) examines a similar phenomenon, where TikTok acts as a cultural space for children, yet their experiences and perspectives are not given the allowance to be fully acknowledged. Focusing on the hashtag #BlackGirlTikTok — a discursive stream that is particularly popular among Black girls in the US — the article notes the great visibility of TikTok content on Black cultures within this hashtagged space, which serves as a ‘homespace’ for Black girls. However, this space is predominantly occupied with cultural practices and discourses of adult Black women, partly due to the term “Black girl” being deployed as an umbrella category to include both Black women and girls. As a result, the representation and practices of Black girls are largely absent in this space. Given that such digital enclave spaces serve as a community for identity politics (Campbell and Golan 2011) — in this case, Black feminism — this absence calls for deeper scrutiny on how children can be more meaningfully included in egalitarian digital praxis with the value of youth cultures and discourses being acknowledged.

Samuel Cabbuag and Crystal Abidin take a different turn to understand how children are participating in platform vernaculars. In “TikTok ‘dogshows’ and the amplification of online incivility among Gen Z influencers in the Philippines” (Cabbuag and Abidin 2024), they examine the Filipino internet vernacular culture, called “dogshows”. In this subculture, social media users indiscriminately target others with derogatory humour and provocative memes, and very young children are often placed at the forefront to deliberately provoke online incivility in pursuit of fame by their parents. At the same time, TikTok's affordances of silosociality encourage young users to participate in these harmful interactions for humour and fun. This raises critical questions about how to guide children on the platform in ways that protect their wellbeing, especially as their vernacular cultures are increasingly shaped around such harmful humour. It also underscores the platform's responsibility to take a more active role in monitoring different community groups, particularly those in marginalised and high-risk situations that require greater care and oversight.

In Jessica Balanzategui's (2024) “Skinamarink and the algorithmic uncanny interface between children's TikTok and horror film cultures” she explores the unexpected but generative collision between an indie horror film that was leaked online and the remnants of nostalgic childhood content intersecting via algorithmic amplification. Balanzategui notes that horror movies are increasingly finding and growing audiences via social media virality, but that virality is rarely strictly demarcated as adult or children's culture. Thus, the unexpected intersection of a children's nursery rhyme and a horror film can reveal the intensities and limitations in terms of what TikTok's algorithms can distinguish and promote to specific audiences.

Lastly, Alex Turvy suggests examining platform governance of TikTok to assess how children are protected on the platform. In “Reading latent values and priorities in TikTok's community guidelines for children” (Turvy 2024), he traces the first launch of, and ongoing revisions and new additions made to, TikTok's Community Guidelines. These guidelines not only outline official policies, but also reflect the company's underlying values and strategic priorities in a subtle way. In the guidelines, while children are recognised as a core user group requiring special consideration, the overly positive framing of child protection, coupled with restrictive measures based solely on age, limits young people's agency and creativity. This approach risks exacerbating children's vulnerability by failing to account for the nuanced contexts in which they engage with the platform. This analysis raises the urgent need to consider the complexities of children's engagement and cultures on the platform when developing policies.

Our first commentary, “TikTok & Children: TikTok Cultures Research Network & TikTok Fireside Chat” (2024) is a fireside chat between academia and industry, where Crystal Abidin leads a dialogue with two representatives from TikTok: Claire Gartland of the Youth Safety & Wellbeing Global Product Policy portfolio, and Kathryn Grant of the Outreach & Partnerships in Trust & Safety portfolio. The discussion illuminates the backend processes of TikTok as a company, and of the Trust & Safety vertical that oversees children's wellbeing and welfare on the app. Gartland and Grant were queried on internal decision-making processes, how competing priorities are navigated, and what tensions arise when a platform that is committed to protecting its most vulnerable user base is simultaneously aiming to expand their profit margins.

Finally, our second commentary, “Pushing against the panic: Considering the positives of TikTok and children” presents perspectives from early career scholars who were among the earliest researchers to study children on TikTok: Aleesha Rodriguez and Xinyu (Andy) Zhao (2024). The authors highlight several of the positive and joyful experiences that children can have on TikTok, offering an important reminder that young people are choosing to be on the platform because it gives them pleasure. At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, families around the world struggled with lockdowns and TikTok provided important tools, spaces and opportunities for children and families to consume, create and be entertained together. Rodriguez and Zhao also importantly remind us that as governments across the world consider the place of TikTok in children's lives, it is vital to ensure that we listen to the voices of children in terms of their experiences, needs, and desires.

Final words

At the time of writing, TikTok is about to turn a decade old. When the earliest cohort of scholars began studying the platform, TikTok was still widely touted — and dismissed — as merely an app for children and young people. While the COVID-19 pandemic may have accelerated the uptake of the app among older user groups, significant partnerships with major institutions and important youth-led milestones facilitated the mainstreaming of TikTok into an increasing number of domains.

During the 2019/2020 iteration of the annual bushfire season in Australia, young people across the country took to TikTok as citizen journalists to broadcast coverage from “the ground”, and journalists from the mainstream media relied on these accounts for firsthand updates on their news streams (van der Nagel et al., 2023). When health misinformation was rife on an international scale during the pandemic, the World Health Organization's partnership with TikTok and young creators to disseminate “reliable advice” through TikTok's vernacular of memes (Perrett, 2020) signalled the centrality of the app for strategic communications. Considering TikTok's rapid uptake among young fans in the Asia Pacific markets, K-pop companies began to tailor make singles, choreography, and brand identities of idol groups to leverage on the platform's ethos of promotional labour, resulting in a major shift of consumption patterns and consumer behaviours worldwide (Abidin and Lee, 2023). Even politicians from various countries are targeting young people through personal branding and political campaigning on TikTok, in a bid to groom and influence the political ideologies of prospective cohorts of young voters (Cervi et al., 2023; Vijay and Gekker, 2021).

All this is to say: TikTok has been mainstreamed via children and young people, just as the cultures and practices of children and young people have been mainstreamed through TikTok. It would be remiss to throw the baby out with the bathwater without first spending the time and effort to understand how the platform has been especially transformative for its earliest cohorts of young users, despite all the emerging and established issues currently plaguing the landscape of TikTok. It is hoped that this collection of articles will point to new pathways and frameworks for us to better understand how TikTok and children may continue to be intertwined for the next decade to come, and how we can maximise the benefits and mitigate the risks on our journey there.

Footnotes

Funding

The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The contribution of Lee and Leaver was supported by the Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child (Project Number CE200100022). Abidin's contribution was supported by Strategic Research Funding (SRI) awarded to her by the Faculty of Humanities and the Research Office at Curtin University, for the development of the TikTok Cultures Research Network.

ORCID iDs

Jin Lee

Crystal Abidin

Tama Leaver

Notes

Author biographies

Jin Lee is Senior Research Fellow in Internet Studies. Her area of research is digital intimacies and media practices of marginalized beings in popular culture.

Crystal Abidin is Professor of Internet Studies. Her area of research is the anthropology and ethnography of vernacular internet cultures.

Tama Leaver is Professor of Internet Studies. His area of research includes children's data, privacy and rights in an online world, including the impact of artificial intelligence (mostly GenAI) on children.

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TikTok and children: An Introduction

Abstract

Keywords

Introduction

From Douyin and Musical.ly to TikTok

Communities of interest, activism, and support

Amplified risks

Bans

This Special Issue

Final words

Footnotes

Funding

ORCID iDs

Notes

Author biographies

References