Last summer, TikTok said it planned to create a “youth council” made up of teenagers the company as part of a broader push to boost security features for the app’s youngest users. That group is now official and they have already started meeting with the company, including the company’s CEO Shou Chew .
The announcement comes as TikTok’s parent company ByteDance fights a bill that would force it to sell the app or face a US ban. As part of this effort, the company tried its users, lots of them oppose the measure. Critics of TikTok often refer to as one of the most significant risks posed by the application.
It is not clear how much the newly formed youth council will do to prevent this perception. But the company says the group has already influenced an upcoming media literacy campaign in the US that will “focus on misinformation, AI-generated content and more.” A panel of 15 teenagers from the US, UK, Brazil, Indonesia, Ireland, Kenya, Mexico and Morocco also considered a “youth portal” feature that provides in-app privacy and safety resources.
According to TikTok, the board aims to provide advice on safety policy and issues that often affect teenagers. The group is also partnering with Praesidio Safeguarding, a UK online security organization, which, according to TikTok, helped elect teenage board members, all of whom are paid. The company notes that CEO Shou Chew attended the most recent meeting in February, when the youth council asked TikTok to share more details about how reporting and blocking work on the app.
While it’s not yet known how much influence TikTok’s youth council will have over the company’s policies, if any, it underscores how important teens are to the platform. TikTok is one of them Applications among teenagers in the US, currently the company’s largest market. The company also relied on them to oppose a bill that could have banned the app, though those efforts .
