Tiktok will try to sleep children to sleep to stop the endless scroll

This is 22:00, do you know where your children are? It is the odds that they are probably in their room to turn into Tiktok, but at least now you can be sure that the app is taking steps to make them listen to Lo-Fi Beats to cool. Tiktok declared That it will introduce a new function for users under the age of 16, which is intended to encourage them to wind, not continue to watch.

The new feature, which seems to start automatically for users who are identified as under 16, will introduce a full-screen message, which will encourage the teenager to take a deep breath, exhale and reconcile with the fact that they were cut for the night. Teens can ignore the notification and continue to scroll if they want, but will be hit with a second prompt, which will encourage them to come out again. Tiktok says that over time he will add meditation exercises to the prompt.

Now the kids will actually listen to the warnings and wind up? It’s hard to say. Tiktok claims that in the countries he has piloted messages in “the biggest part of the teenagers decide to keep this reminder.” And there is some evidence that suggests that attention reminders are a net positive. A 2020 Study found that receiving meditations of attention could reduce the stress for recipients and a 2021 survey In particular, teenagers have found a decrease in Romanian, anxiety and negatively repeated thinking when exposed to meditation through a mobile application. So there is at least a little evidence to support the common idea here.

We know for sure that limiting exposure on social media is grace for your mental healthBut the big problem here is the fact that it is a situation of refusal in the end. Children will comply with a message about getting off the application, especially if viewed as intrusive or destructive about their time on the screen? That seems less likely, but who knows? Maybe kids just need permission to stop scrolling.

In addition, if you want to be cynical, Tiktok keeps the children in the application with their meditations so that it still finds a way to hook the children. We hope that the app does not serve them ads during the download, but it is not difficult to see how it could transfer them to application as a calm or better in some crossed promotion. This does not happen for the record, but as, is it difficult to imagine that it eventually happens?

In addition to the download message, Tiktok also boasts some updates to its family pairing function, which gives parents more control over their children’s accounts. This includes a new time distance from the time that will allow a parent or guardian to set a child’s access schedule to the app. It will also allow parents to look at who is following, who follows them and who has blocked. Really the dream of a parent of a helicopter.