TikTok Shop May Be Accessed by Minors Under 18, Contrary to Its Adults-Only Regulation

A loophole in TikTok appears to grant underage users access to its TikTok Shop feature, despite the platform’s rules limiting this service to those 18 and older, according to TikTok’s own guidelines. This problem arises when underage users sign up and falsely claim to be 18 or above, but are subsequently linked to their parent’s account via TikTok’s parental controls. Despite this, they retain access to the Shop tab reserved for adults.

TikTok offers Family Pairing as a feature for parental controls, enabling an adult to oversee their child’s TikTok usage in terms of screen time, content selection, and privacy settings. The process involves going into the app’s settings for the youth to choose “Teen” and for the parent to select “parent” before scanning a QR code to link their accounts.

However, even after activating these parental controls, which nominally transfer certain controls to the parent, the underage user still has access to the Shop tab. This access persists even though the activation should theoretically indicate to TikTok that the user misrepresented their age initially.

Given the mature nature of some items on TikTok Shop, such as adult-oriented products and restricted items, parents should be vigilant about what their teens could encounter on the platform. Despite policies against them, banned goods including sex toys, lingerie, and vape pens were still making their way onto the marketplace.

TechCrunch’s investigation into this loophole was conducted by creating and then linking a new, supposed 18+ TikTok account through Family Pairing to simulate a real-world scenario where a teen lies about their age to bypass age restrictions.

Throughout various tests, the Shop tab remained visible to the underage user’s account in all configurations, unless the Restricted Mode was enabled, revealing shortcomings in TikTok’s enforcement of its policies.

Despite attempts to enforce settings through Family Pairing, the Shop tab’s accessibility remained the same, suggesting that the initial declaration of being over 18 took precedence over later indications of a minor status through parental controls.

This experiment underscores the efficacy issues within TikTok’s parental controls and age verification processes. Despite efforts to utilize Family Pairing and enable Restricted Mode, the Shop tab’s presence without strict age verification measures offers a misleading sense of security to parents. TikTok, when queried, was initially unaware of the potential for such a loophole. The organization highlighted that TikTok Shop is meant for users 18 and up, basing visibility on the age input at registration, not on parental control settings.

The findings suggest TikTok should refine its age verification process during Family Pairing or alert parents to discrepancies in age declaration that could affect content exposure.

Whether TikTok will address this loophole remains to be seen, particularly as TikTok Shop could become a significant draw for the platform, capitalizing on its appeal to younger demographics and competing with established online marketplaces.

Update, 6/16/24, 6:45 am et: TikTok will consider the user’s declared age at sign-up but not the activation of parental controls in determining Shop visibility. This clarification came after a previous inaccuracy.