What age TikTok / YouTube for dc?

[Duvetstay]

My 9 year old DD is desperate for TikTok... Apparently EVERYONE has it (which I know to be false)

What age did you allow this for your dc? I know bugger all about it and feel about 120 but my thinking is that she's too young and a lot of it will be sexualized stuff or heavily filtered etc (she's very appearence orientated so I don't think it would help)

She has YouTube kids on her tablet but wants the full version. Again I'm not happy with this, she'll just be watching those awful family vloggers with piles of crap or sexualized music videos.

She's been in tears for hours now and as although I'll stick to my guns, how long can you hold back the tide??!

I think 9 is too young. I have a sensible 11 year old who scrolls immediately past anything that looks dodgy but there’s so much on there that’s really horrible that you can’t avoid until it’s too late. Even on restricted mode there’s awful language, racism, mocking of disabled people, sexual things.
I did spend a lot of time on my dd’s account ‘disliking’ certain videos so that she’d see less of those sort and now she mostly sees arty things or hairstyles.

Why don’t you get an account and let her watch it with you that was you can monitor what she’s seeing and discuss anything that comes up. Some of it is quite fun.

(That’s tiktok by the way).
I reckon a similar approach would work for YouTube-just watch it together/have it on the tv.
There’s a lot of good stuff on there as well as the crap

Thanks wholeholes... I can see that getting an account myself could work then at least I know what she's seeing

I watch YouTube and we have the app on our TV... It's more that I don't want her watching it alone. Thanks, good advice

TikTok’s age limit is 13, so a nine year old shouldn’t be anywhere near it.

TikTok can be very dangerous for children - it’s not a dance videos app. It has all sorts of videos on there including darker ones of animal abuse, filmed police incidents, sexual and violent videos and so on.

A private account is virtually useless because that doesn’t stop the videos your child can see, and because it’s random, they could see anything. You can’t control it.

Mumsnet is quite twitchy about TikTok OP. But I let dd have it when she started secondary and absolutely no problems, I just talked to her about the risks. It’s also in family safe mode - not sure if exact term but using it in child mode is important . I don’t let her have Instagram, but she has TikTok and Pinterest and whatsapp. No issues here so far, but they do need to be old enough for a proper chat about it

Your daughter is FAR too young. The only way TikTok should be allowed is if the app is on your phone, you always watch with her, and you control the filtering. You could watch cute animal videos or other age appropriate subjects.

It’s also in family safe mode - not sure if exact term but using it in child mode is important.

tootyfruitypickleThat only tries to filter out inappropriate content; it won’t completely.

A chat with your daughter is virtually useless when she’s been exposed to violent/sexual/abuse/other inappropriate videos.

To add to all the other advise; it shows you more of what you 'like' so if you wanted to scroll through weekly you'd soon get an idea of what DD was seeing.
That being said, my kids don't have it. I do, but I got it to preview what it was all about before making the decision that 10 is too young for my kid to have it.

Won’t let my 9 year old have Tik Tok. But she has her own YouTube channel.

I'm 34 and not in any way sheltered or prudish etc and there is a LOT on there that makes me think "fucking hell" or I instantly have to scroll past because I know why will come next. It is absolutely not appropriate for a 9 year old.

Even with the targeted stuff and my only 'liking' very PG content I have still had incredibly sexualized, bad language, police/arrest videos, police shooting people videos, abuse videos (or people, usually young girls filming themselves being physically, or verbally abused by partners or family members) people screaming crying, graphic things about abortion, baby and child loss. There are people asking for money with sob stories and "can you please cash app me xxx I need to escape xxx"

Just for an example, the popular, viral thing at the moment is a gyrating, twerking, bouncing dance to 'wet ass pussy' by Cardi B.

I downloaded TikTok early in the lockdown. The algorithm has learnt from my likes and follows and I now get mostly cute dog videos, comedy, crafts, and quite sweetly wholesome ‘cottagecore’ content, but for some reason at first I got a LOT of content about BDSM kinks which is grand if that’s your cup of tea but struck me as quite niche.