In June of last year, TikTok announced its plans to form a “youth council” of teenage advisors as part of a broader initiative to strengthen safety measures for younger users of the app. Now, the company has announced that this group is official and has begun meeting with the company, including its CEO, Shou Zi Chew.
The announcement comes at a time when TikTok is fighting against a bill in the United States that would force the parent company, ByteDance, to sell the app to a US company to avoid its total ban in the country.
Among the significant risks that the app would pose, detractors of TikTok often cite the safety of young people, a reason why the company has tried to mobilize its users, many of them teenagers, to oppose the US government’s measure and change the overall image.
It is not clear if the newly created youth council will do much to counteract that perception, but the company claims that the group has already influenced an upcoming media literacy campaign in the United States and that “it will focus on misinformation, AI-generated content, and much more.”
The council, composed of 15 teenagers from the United States, United Kingdom, Brazil, Indonesia, Ireland, Kenya, Morocco, and Mexico, has also given their opinion on the app’s “youth portal,” which provides privacy and security resources.
According to TikTok, the youth council aims to advise on safety policies and issues that often affect teenagers. The group also collaborates with the British online safety organization Praesidio Safeguarding, which helped select the teenage members of the council, all of whom are paid, according to TikTok.
The company states that its CEO, Shou Zi Chew, attended the recent meeting that took place in February, when the youth council asked TikTok to share more details about how reporting and blocking work in the app.
