Tiktok

[Zombiemum1946]

We've discovered our daughter has been gifting money on tiktok. £2300 has left her dad's account. Has anyone had any success in getting the money back ?

OP sorry if I have the wrong end of the stick but does your child have a smartphone?

I've learned from friends that schools are demanding children have smartphones, but if all the parents get together and refuse then surely the school has to think again?

My dd is 9 and has tiktok.

Why?

I downloaded the app on my phone and signed her in and she is signed in on her tablet. I can monitor what shes doing on my phone.

Have you actually looked? It takes seconds for your child to see or read or hear something seriously inappropriate. You may sit right with her but scrolling through she has seen before you have acted.

I just looked on the app now and the first 5 videos contained swearing, glamorisation of eating disorders, talk about sex and a cat eating a bird.

How many of those would you like to expose your 9 year old to?

Yes she has her brother's old Apple phone after he upgraded his. She doesn't take it to school. She partly uses a chrome book at school and will be using it full-time from p6 and right through secondary school just as her brother does. Apparently most if not all school work will be done on chrome books or similar by the time she goes to secondary school. The chrome books are given out by the school and have lots programmed internet access limitations.My son emails his work to the relevant teacher as well as handing in written work, it all then goes in to his portfolio. My son has to take his phone to school but he's in 5th year.

That should say pre programmed access limitations.

Thanks wonder bag. What appears to have happened is that when my husband bought an app for her at Christmas, the app store kept the bank information. Both of us use android phones so weren't aware that Apple did this. As I said Apple is now barred from our accounts, 6 weeks has been more than enough to put us off for life . None of us are perfect but take heart that we're being suitably punished financially.

Yes the App Store keeps the information but you have to put in a code, use Face ID or fingerprints to access it.

She's only had the phone since Christmas. Her friends have had them for a couple of years. My son didn't get his first phone till he went to secondary but his friends started getting them in primary at about my daughters age and younger. Every time their parents got a new phone the kids got the previous one. He didn't get a brand new one till last year. So we've been comparatively restrictive.

I won’t allow my 8 year old DD on it, I’ve seen some of the adult content on there so know it’s not appropriate for an 8 year old at all...

It’s done now though so I’d try contacting both tiktok and the bank to see if anything can be done. My DH has family sharing through apple which FIL also uses and for some reason he managed to unknowingly spend £150 on an app which came out of DH’s bank. DH contacted Apple and they refunded it without any issues.

Thank you so much for that info. Gives us hope to get at least some of the money back.

Do you think you could bear to go to the local or even national papers with this?
I imagine there are a lot of people who don’t know this. Also, with the weight of a paper behind you you have a slightly better chance of getting your money back.

I’m the meanest parent in the planet according to my 12yr old DC (ASD) for not letting them have access to Tiktok, and time and after time I’m so glad that when I say ‘no’ I mean ‘no’ and that DC know this!

I'm not sure if we could go to the papers. A woman in England did and she'd lost over £3000. I'm not sure it would be fair on my daughter.

Her tiktok is on child mode so the content is limited.

It’s quite bad that money can be sent if it’s on child mode, you’d think that would automatically deactivate as well as censoring the content.

Some influencers have been dealt with for it. I was shocked that it was possible as well.

I hope you get your money back.

Tiktok is a huge issue for children. So many are on it and it poses a massive risk. Parents think that ensuring privacy settings are set up protects their child but they can still access some extremely worrying content just by watching the content on the ‘for you’ bit on the app.

I downloaded it for an evening and spent some time scrolling the videos - not even searching for dodgy content (which brings up even more obviously). I found loads content referring to:

• Sexual acts including under age
• Drug taking
• Eating disorders
• Racism
• Violence
• Graphic songs with all of the above
• Influencer types with ‘perfect’ bodies, make up and lives that are not true representations of what is realistic in life.

Many young children do not have their account on private and are dancing very sexually to massively inappropriate content. It frightens me to think about the kind of sickos that could be getting off on it. Many children are wearing their school uniform and are using what looks like their real names.

Surely a 9 year old is wise enough to realise that this is basically stealing money from her father? Surely it's also old enough to be aware of how much she is actually giving? I would be sceptical if her excuses of thinking it's only a pound and not real money.

Stern words are needed here, I would be absolutely livid.

Tiktok not appropriate for a 9 yr old. The 'for you' page itself has many sexualised dancing videos, content with inappropriate jokes and language with most of this content being created by young teens themselves which is normalising it all to even younger children and a opens up a world of content for paedophiles tbh.

Try contacting tiktok re getting your money back but I have no idea how likely you are to succeed. Hard lesson for all I think

@Mlou32
I’d be livid too - at myself. Not at my young child. And not for the loss of £2300 but for what she may have been exposed to and seen.

@LovingLola oh I'd be concerned at what she had been exposed to as well. However that wasn't my point. However I was addressing one point of the situation. That point was that surely at 9 years old, she knows right and wrong and knows that taking money from her fathers account without his knowledge or permission is wrong.

Just because you are concerned at one part of the situation doesn't mean that you don't care about any other aspects of it. And I would think that being concerned about what she had been exposed to goes without even having to say it.

My kid’s secondary school sent warning emails to parents strongly advising them to keep their kids away from this.
Allowing a 9 year old to set up an account is shocking. Serves you right, and you can consider yourself lucky that was the worst thing to happen to her.

TikTok is wholly inappropriate for children; there’s a reason it has a 13+ age limit.

You shouldn’t have let your 9 year old be exposed to it, no matter how “careful” you think you were with her account.

To be honest I think the money lost is a hard lesson in knowing exactly what your children are accessing, how it all works and ensuring they aren’t accessing material unsuitable for their age, which TikTok certainly was.

Hi OP, my 9 year old cousin did this recently accept it was £4,000 . Again my uncles savings account so he didn’t notice immediately. They managed to get it all back after contacting Apple and the bank. I hope the ending is good news for you too x

Except sorry not accept *

Your 9 YO shouldn’t even have a phone (too young) and definitely shouldn’t have this app which is 13+.

The government guidelines are there to protect children who are too young & immature.

This is a perfect example of why they shouldn’t have a phone. Take it off her.