To wonder why parents allow their children on Tictok?

[Rainbowb]

Dd is only year three but a lot of her friends go in this site which is renowned for attracting paedophiles and has disturbing videos on it including sexually explicit material and animal cruelty. Why on earth would you risk exposing an under age child to that kind of thing?!

Because not every video is to do with sex and animal cruelty and I watch what she sees.
She also doesn’t talk to anyone on there.

Just because you don’t doesnt make other parents wrong.

I don’t think my son had any access to the internet in Year 3. He had a phone in Y6 and now has internet access through the PS4 in Year 7. He does have TikTok which I look at every couple of days and what he is doing seems fairly harmless. I think it’s more about parenting and having a conversation with your child than just banning stuff outright.

My daughter is very fond of tik tok since all of her friends are on it and she often makes dancing videos (I don't let her post them though!) and I have to say that although some of the dances could be interpreted as sexual, tik tok is generally harmless and dd finds it hilarious and it keeps her from causing mischief so I'm all for it!

As a 40 something year old woman I lost several hours of my life watching tictoc videos with my dc over the Christmas/new year - it must have been a different tictoc to the one you explain, no paedophiles, no animal cruelty not even a sexually explicit video...all I saw were lots of dancing routines, mimes and lots of silly challenges. I took it as an opportunity to spend time sharing an activity with them and retain my insight into their youthful world. I've always found it important to take an interest in what interested my dc, it means we are more connected. My dc who are now late teens/early 20's and I can have open and relevant conversations, I still believe I am one of the strongest influencers in their lives because it pays to know the world they are in. Banning them from things without enough knowledge of it is a bit knee jerk in my view....

I’ve watched (guilty!) hours and never come across anything sexual or animal cruelty...what have you seen? Not saying it doesn’t exist but you don’t come across it all the time.

Loads of primary school kids now seem obsessed with it. I don't think it's a good idea either OP.

That's like saying why would you let people on the internet just because there is some bad stuff on it.

Every site has unsavoury content when it involves user submitted content. It's almost impossible to moderate sites once they reach over a certain size. On youtube for example, 24 hours of content are uploaded every minute - they'd need several thousand people watching around the clock just to keep up.

Teach your children how to keep safe on the internet and monitor what they do. Banning every site on kneejerk reactions wont help.

Because as we all sites its about how you teach your children to use them. Both my DC have it one year 7 one year 4. Both have private accounts with only real life friends, I have full access to it and they are only allowed the phone/tablet downsides. Both my DC are fully aware of how to stay safe and what to do if some worries them. They have never had any sexual videos appear or animal cruelty, worst they have had is some swearing but then they hear that from their Dad 🤣.
It's not about banning apps its about how to stay safe. I'm very open with my DC, they know my expectations.