TikTok will tighten age checks for users in Europe in the coming weeks. This is done as regulators increase pressure on social media platforms to more effectively identify and remove accounts belonging to children under the age of 13.
Quoted by VOI from Reuters on Thursday, January 15, TikTok said it would launch an artificial intelligence-based age detection technology that had previously been tested for a year in the European region. This previously unreported system analyzes various signals. This ranges from profile information, uploaded videos, to user behavior patterns, to predict whether an account is likely to be owned by a minor.
TikTok menegaskan akun yang terindikasi di bawah usia minimum tidak akan langsung diblokir otomatis. "Akun yang ditandai oleh teknologi ini akan ditinjau oleh moderator khusus, bukan langsung dihapus," kata perusahaan tersebut.
This move comes amid sharp scrutiny by European authorities of how digital platforms verify users' ages, especially under strict data protection rules. Regulators are concerned that current methods are ineffective or, conversely, too invasive of privacy.
Global pressure on social media is also getting stronger. Australia in 2025 made history by imposing a ban on social media for children under the age of 16. In Europe, the European Parliament is pushing for the implementation of a minimum age limit for social media platforms, while Denmark is even proposing a ban on social media for children under 15 years old.
TikTok revealed that the trial in the UK alone had resulted in the deletion of thousands of additional accounts belonging to children under 13 years of age, indicating the scale of the problem that had escaped the old system.
"There is no globally agreed way to ensure a person's age while protecting their privacy," TikTok said in a statement. For the appeal process for account blocking, the company will use facial age estimation technology from verification provider Yoti, combined with credit card checks and official government IDs.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, is also known to use Yoti's services to verify user age.
TikTok emphasizes that this new technology was developed specifically for Europe to be in line with the region's regulatory requirements. In the development process, TikTok worked with the Irish Data Protection Commission (Ireland's Data Protection Commission), which is the EU's main privacy regulator for the company.
TikTok users in Europe will receive notifications when this age detection technology is implemented. For regulators, this is a mandatory step. For TikTok, it's about survival. And for young users who have been "neben age", the free era may soon end.
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