How To Use TikTok Family Pairing
In the past two years, TikTok has became one of the most famous social networks. Thanks to its original format, people of all ages are attracted to the app and have the possibility to express themselves or just enjoy others' creativity. However, TikTok has also been a subject of controversy and many users have called out contents that aren’t suitable for minors, as well as the easy communication between majors and teens (you have to be at least 13 years-old to create an account). To respond to those critics, the app proposes a feature called Family Pairing (also known as Family Sync) that allows you to restrict your teens’ access to TikTok. If you want to know how to enable it, you are at the right place.
TikTok Family Pairing Features
Launched in April 2020, Family Pairing has increasingly gained resources to ensure the safety and protection of teenage social network use. Below, you can review the main actions and features that parents can take when choosing to use family sync:
Screen Time Management
This feature allows parents to impose a time limit per day so that their children can stay at TikTok for a selected time period, preventing the use of the social network from taking up space that should be dedicated to studies or other activities. The options are 40, 60, 90 or 120 minutes per day.
Direct Messages
Perhaps TikTok's most important parental control feature. You can block teenagers from receiving direct messages or prevent certain profiles from sending messages to them. In addition, TikTok already has a very restrictive policy that blocks images and videos and deactivates direct messages for children under 16.
Search
This option allows you to block the search bar on the Search Tab. With this, the user will not be able to search for users, hashtags or do any other search at all. The user can still view content on the Find tab and follow new users that appear for him.
Restricted mode and profile
With the activation of the restricted mode, content that is considered by TikTok to be inappropriate for minors will not appear among the suggestions in the For You Feed of the teen’s profile. The restricted profile prevents anyone from finding the account and viewing the teenager's publications.
How to activate TikTok Family Pairing
- First of all, the parent must open a TikTok account, since the resources are only activated by linking the accounts.
- Select Me.
- Tab the three dots.
- Scroll down and select Family Pairing. If the option doesn’t show, then select Digital Wellbeing and then Family Pairing.
- A description page of the feature will now open. Select Continue.
- After, you will get a message ”Who is using this TikTok account?. Select Parent, then Next.
- A QR Code will appear.
- Go to your children’s phone and follow the same steps, but this time select Teen when asked “Who is using this TikTok account?”.
- Scan the QR code to synchronize devices.
You can now customize the settings of your teen’s TikTok.
Does It Really Help?
Even though Family Pairing is a great initiative, it isn’t flawless. TikTok has an algorithm that suggests similar videos to the videos you have previously watched, especially to the videos you have watched for the longest. It seems that Family Pairing does restrict the inappropriate content but not all of it. Communicating with your teen about the videos they are exposed to on the app is undoubtedly the best way to protect them.
This document, titled « How To Use TikTok Family Pairing », is available under the Creative Commons license. Any copy, reuse, or modification of the content should be sufficiently credited to CCM (ccm.net).
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