Daily Telegraph: TikTok testing the innocence of your child

The latest trend on TikTok is a sexual innocence test that asks lots of “Have you ever…?” The questions are hard core. You can get noticed on TikTok joining a trend which means that lots of the same trending theme goes into a users’ feed. If your child is on TikTok they’ve likely seen this innocence test and people talking about their sexual experience.

 The journalist asked me if parental controls are the best way to keep their kids safe from such content. My answer is no. Parental controls may work with younger children but with teens they’re a weak strategy. I’ve been interviewing young people a lot for my latest research and they talk to me about how they easily avert such controls.

 Parenting about social media is difficult. We cannot approach it as ‘set the rule and forget’. Social media is ever-changing so its’s key that parents stay up to date, that their discussions about social media with their child are regular, and that they don’t just focus on limiting screentime without supporting their child to understand the content they’re seeing and why its been uploaded. Digital Literacy is the key.

I’ve pasted the article below plus the test known as the Rice Purity test below.