TikTok has reasonable teen safety policies

On Tuesday, President Biden signed a law that would require ByteDance, a Chinese company, to sell TikTok within the next year or face a ban in the U.S. TikTok has said that it will fight the law in court, likely with support from the ACLU and other American free speech and internet freedom organizations.

I have stayed out of this debate for two reasons. One is because I have a conflict of interest. TikTok is one of several companies that provide financial support to ConnectSafely, the nonprofit internet safety organization that I co-founded. Another is because I am not an expert on U.S.China

relations and all of its complexities. What I can say is that about 170 million Americans, more than half the U.S. population, use TikTok and will be affected if the app is banned. I suspect that most of the 170 million users are primarily consumers of TikTok's short videos, but a substantial number are creators, including many who make all or part of their living through the service either through revenue shares from advertising on the service, tips from other users, affiliate marketing or by using the service to promote their business.

Although I don't have the expertise to comment on the issue of whether their Chinese ownership may have a detrimental impact on Americans, I do know quite a bit about the company's safety policies and can attest that they, at the very least, are keeping up with their competitors when it comes to protecting teenage users.

We read a lot about the negatives when it comes to TikTok and other social media companies, but TikTok, like most of their competitors, has policies in place to protect younger users. There are risks associated with almost everything we do, but there are safeguards in place.