TikTok needs to do more to keep kids off platform, privacy watchdogs find

TikTok has not been doing enough to keep children off of its popular online video platform or to avoid collecting their personal information for targeted advertising and content, according to a group of federal and provincial privacy watchdogs. The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, alongside the privacy authorities for Alberta, British Columbia, and Quebec, announced Tuesday, Sept. 23 that their investigation into the privacy practices of ByteDance Ltd.’s TikTok found hundreds of thousands of Canadian kids use TikTok each year. The investigation focused on the company’s privacy practices regarding younger users, “including whether the company obtained valid and meaningful consent from these users for the collection, use and disclosure of their personal information,” stated a press release from the federal privacy regulators. “Where these children were engaging with the platform before being removed, TikTok was already collecting, inferring, and using information about them to serve them targeted ads and recommend tailored content to them,” the organizations’ report states. “Recognizing the significant gaps that we observed in TikTok’s underage user detection mechanisms, we found it likely that many more children continued to use the platform, undetected, and therefore subjected to profiling and targeting by TikTok.” While kids under the age of 13 (14 in Quebec) are barred from using the platform by TikTok’s own terms of use, the investigation found the company had “inadequate measures” to keep kids off of it. It found “only one” age assurance mechanism to keep kids from accessing the platform, except for its livestreaming tool, being a voluntary age gate asking people to enter their birthday and blocking them from opening an account if the date they put in made them underage. It also had human moderators examining accounts flagged as potentially belonging to underage users by an automated tool searching for language a child might use, or reports by other users. “The offices determined that the tools implemented by TikTok to keep children off its platform were largely ineffective. This was particularly true in respect of the majority of users who are ‘lurkers’ or ‘passive users’, who view videos on the platform without posting video or text content,” the report states. “TikTok also employed sophisticated analytics tools to estimate the age of users for other business purposes, but did not employ those same or similar tools to keep underage users off its platform.” TikTok has agreed to boost its privacy efforts, according to the privacy groups. The company was asked for comment by The Wire Report, including an additional request for an update on its efforts to challenge a government order that it wind up its Canadian operations. “We welcome the conclusion of this investigation after working openly and constructively with the privacy commissioners, and are pleased they agreed to a number of our proposals to further strengthen our platform for Canadians,” a spokesperson wrote in an email. “While we disagree with some of the findings, we remain committed to maintaining strong transparency and privacy practices.” The efforts include enhancing age-assurance tools to keep underage users off of the platform and providing more privacy information in French. “TikTok made some improvements to its privacy practices during the investigation. This included changes to effectively stop allowing advertisers to target users under the age of 18, except based on broad categories such as language and approximate location,” the press release states. “As well, TikTok expanded the privacy information available to Canadian users, in English and French, including setting out the rights of users to access or update the information about them that TikTok holds.” The report notes that TikTok “generally disagreed with the findings” of the investigation, though it did commit to making several changes. Those include new age assurance mechanisms “that are to be demonstrably effective at keeping underage users off the platform.” It is also to enhance its privacy policy to better explain targeted advertising and content personalization and stop allowing advertising to target people younger than 18. There is to be a new plain-language summary of the privacy policy for teens, up-front notices about the collection and use of biometric information and “the potential for data to be processed in China,” and a new “privacy settings check-up” for all Canadian users to help them more easily review and adjust their settings. Overall, the privacy commissioner’s office considers the investigation to be “conditionally resolved.” Kids were not the only users examined. The group said teen and adult users were not given adequate explanations of TikTok’s data practices, and that TikTok did not get meaningful consent for the “collection and use of vast amounts of user data.” Meaningful consent on online platforms The concept of meaningful consent regarding online platforms has risen as high as Canada’s Supreme Court in recent months. In June, the court agreed to review Meta Platforms Inc.’s arguments in a long-running dispute with the federal privacy commissioner. READ MORE: - Meta’s content moderation changes highlight challenges for Canadian digital regulation The Facebook owner looked to bring its fight to the country’s highest court in November, seeking its analysis of two points it argues have been raised by the debate on the matter: how should courts determine whether an organization has gotten meaningful consent from its users to share personal information with a third party, and how should courts determine whether an organization has kept in place reasonable security safeguards? The Federal Court, meanwhile, was asked by the Privacy Commissioner earlier this year to look into requiring the Montreal-based company behind Pornhub to obtain meaningful consent from those who appear in the intimate videos on its platforms, while the company said it is not violating the country’s privacy law. hdaley@thewirereport.ca With files from The Wire Report’s archives.

TikTok needs to do more to keep kids off platform, privacy watchdogs find

Regulatory |
By Hannah Daley
|September 23, 2025

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TikTok needs to do more to keep kids off platform, privacy watchdogs find

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