To not let my daughter have TikTok

No way. TikTok is so addictive. Keep them away from it for as long as possible.

DS1 used to say "I see all the videos anyway because my friends send them to me" fine but you're not getting in the grip of that algorithm.

I have seen fully grown adults be unable to resist the urge to pull their phone out and stare into the void of TikTok in the middle of a social gathering. It's scary.

I can't remember the exact quote but it's something like - we thought it would be a long time until technology was stronger than human strengths. What we didn't consider was the point where technology would overtake our weaknesses, and we have already passed that point.

It's calibrated to an ADULT weakness. An 11 year old's brain does not have the defences that an adult's brain does against this.

Indeed @noblegiraffe you're probably right. I was holding back on directly accusing China, but yes, that's what I don't like... Can everyone sucked in by TikTok not see this??!

I don't allow TikTok or Snapchat for 13 year old son and I use the Family Link app to block them on his devices. He is also the only one in his friendship group without them but I think they're toxic so it's a hard no for now.

I haven't ever been on TikTok as I feel there's something dodgy about it than other SM, not sure why.

Probably because it is dodgy. Many countries have banned their government officials from having it on their phones because of the spyware crap it puts on there. China can hardly be trusted in that arena.

Aside from that it's full of shite conspiracy theories and grifters and con artists in the guise of 'influencers'.

I haven't ever been on TikTok as I feel there's something dodgy about it than other SM, not sure why. But most people I work with are on and it's all they talk about, what they look at, and how long they spend watching videos. These are grown adults! I just think it sounds ridiculous and not healthy for you at all. Especially as the topics they discuss are not very pleasant. I'm not a cyber puritan by any means, I'll scroll through haircut videos on Instagram on a night, but I would not want my child to be drawn in through algorithms that throw nasty stuff at them day after day. It's very difficult to know how to get around the problems with SM when there are also many advantages and positives.
Just hold off on TikTok if you can. Easier said than done, I know.

Not around when my child was that age but we held out against having a smart phone until they were 13 or 14 and then monitored far more carefully than they knew.

Yes they look at things outside the home and we had to complain to the school about their lax standards for internet use.

Keep your child away from the toxic parts of the internet wherever and whenever you can.

Y8 DD and we’re still hard no to both Snapchat and TikTok. They’re the platforms I’m least familiar with and not confident of being able to set up sufficient parental controls on. Will revisit in year 9 but so much drama emanates from Snapchat that I want to avoid it as much as possible.

Sorry year 7. I was reading others posts. You could see if you could mollify her with capcut rather than TikTok in that case.

Why can't people read the thread?!

The OP's dc is not 7, she is in YEAR 7. So around 11/12.

We've said a hard no to Snapchat. DD1 (Y11 so 16) has instagram and tiktok. Insta is how she communicates with her friends and I follow both her accounts so know what she's sharing, it's all fine. Tiktok she mainly looks at booktok. Think she's had them since she turned 13ish so Y8 but she didn't post on inst until last year, just followed her friends.

DD2 (Y10 but still 14) has instagram but not tiktok. I follow her on instagram and she doesn't share much.

I think it's sensible to delay them getting access as long as you can. But otherwise if they have a good relationship with you and know they can talk to you if there's a problem, and they have good mental health, a decent selection of RL interests, and nice friends then they'll be protected from the worst excesses of social media and will use it as a tool rather than being consumed by it.

The trouble is when one or more of those aren't there. During the pandemic DD1's friends had a falling out and a lot of horrible things were said via Whatsapp groups. She was quite open with me about what was happening and so we were able to talk about treating everyone with respect and not taking part in or engaging with the horrible behaviour and I spoke to school about some of the worst behaviour I knew about. Some of her friends (on both sides of the fall out) were badly affected by it, mainly those who had poor mental health to begin with. And having it on Whatsapp rather than just during school hours didn't help, some of the girls would be sending horrible messages late into the night (we have a family rule that phones stay in the kitchen overnight and there would be hundreds of messages in the morning. Absolutely insane).

7 is way too young. My dd is ten and not on either of those. She’s recently asked for capcut which I think is meant to be for slightly younger but I’m still wary.

Can I ask why TikTok is bad for your mental health?

I would highly recommend watching The Social Dilemma with your DC. It’s a really accessible documentary that we watched as a family befor they got phones and off the back of it they’ve both decided to avoid social media until 16. I agree much better to have open dialogues and help them (steer them towards) good choices when it comes to tech

Whilst I see what you're saying and agree that I wish kids this age were not on there, I'd be weary about singling her out as the only one without it. My experience of friends who didn't let their kids have what others had at that age didn't end up well for them. Their kids rapidly went the other way as they had spent forever being told they couldn't have anything. I'm not suggesting this is the case here at all, just commenting on 2 friend groups that this happened to with their kids.

Absolutely not. You can’t monitor everything she does on tiktok, and even if you could, it would be too late by the time you’d seen it and the damage would have been done.

OP’s daughter is in Year 7, she’s not 7yo.

No. So many of these sites are nothing short of toxic. I’m pleased they’re finally in the spotlight.

Yes, better imo to learn how to use social media sensibly with adult guidance and supervision, rather than being left to their own devices on a secret account. They will have to manage it for themselves eventually.

I recently allowed Snapchat for my 13 year old. She's open enough about what her classmates chat about that I'm not too concerned but I still won't allow tiktok, that is far worse in my opinion.

The main problem / advantage with TikTok is the algorithm gives you more and more of what you watch - so it becomes addictive and kids can fall on very dark places very soon
however, kids do get really good really quick at setting secret accounts, deleting cookies, etc
and if other kids at school show her things on their phones in a way she’s already been exposed
it’s hard, there are no hard rules, but consider in a couple of years she’ll be old enough to have their own social media accounts- I would say yes, but keeping a close eye on the kind of things she watches and time limits

Is she on other social media platforms?
Instagram reels and Facebook videos show very similar content to TikTok. Viral stuff will be on every platform and not just TikTok.

I think you're right, OP, that being too strict will just push kids towards creating secret accounts that you can't monitor. This is what happened with most of dd's friends whose parents didn't allow them access. I had one friend who was very vocal and quite smug about her strict no-social-media policy, but I could see how active her dd was on various platforms through monitoring my own dd's accounts!

I held off on Snapchat for as long as I could because you can't monitor stuff when it disappears, but I did allow it eventually when I felt that dd had demonstrated that she could use social media sensibly and responsibly.

Honestly, I think it's impossible these days for parents to completely control or even monitor all of their children's online activity, as they will find ways of accessing stuff if they really want to. So I think the most important thing is to maintain an open and honest dialogue about what they're doing online, what risks they're potentially exposing themselves to, how to keep themselves safe etc.

Why does your 7 yo have a phone that she can set up a secret tiktok account on?

Can't amend my previous post, I misread and thought it said she was 7 years old. Which wouldn't have surprised me because I know people who let their 3 & 4 year olds on TikTok 🙃

YANBU. I work with these platforms (online advertising). There is no way I would let a child in yr7 access it. DD is yr5, thankfully shows zero interest, she does like watching animal videos together with me on insta.
She's not getting any social media access unsupervised for a good while yet. I don't care she may end up thinking I'm the "mean mum" but DH and I are agreed (he's in cyber security). TikTok and Snap in particular are awful with virtually zero protection from the platforms.