Sunday Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Two minutes and a few clicks for underbelly to be laid bare
It takes little over two minutes from downloading TikTok to the first sighting of a teenager being bombarded with sexual comments.
After seeing a homepage full of lip-syncing teens, it is just moments before we glimpse the dark underbelly where older users try to sexually harass younger ones.
One video shows a dancing teenage girl being urged by other viewers: “Take off your clothes.”
In another, featuring a girl aged just 15, one man posts a request to “climb on top of me”, while other users make crude comments about pleasuring themselves.
Others joke about how long it will be until she is “legal”. A US user, where the age of consent is
18, gloats: “3 more years boys.”
Elsewhere, a teen posts a video asking if anyone would miss him “if he was gone”. He is met with a reply from a boy in school uniform, laughing and shaking his head.
Another woman, who has dwarfism, is taunted by a user who holds up a ruler to the screen.
But these humiliations are not short-lived – many are packaged later into longer videos for sharing on other sites, such as YouTube.
We also saw a video of children from an unidentified school attack a boy in the playground. Under another post, a teenage girl is repeatedly jeered for her “massive nose” and “disgusting teeth.”
Follow-up videos begging for the abuse to stop merely fuel the trolls.
Setting up TikTok took only a moment, giving my email and date of birth – which is not checked. That means all of this is just a few clicks away for any 13-year-old – and younger, if they choose to lie.