TikTok will play 'relaxing music' to remind young people to stop using the app.

TikTok has decided to implement a new feature aimed at encouraging teenagers to reduce their use of the app during the night. From now on, if a user under the age of 16 remains active on the platform after 10 PM, TikTok will interrupt their feed with a full-screen "calmness" reminder. This message will include relaxing music to help young people become aware of the time and unwind.

If the user ignores the first alert, a more difficult-to-dismiss reminder will be activated. Additionally, TikTok plans to expand this feature and will begin testing the inclusion of meditation exercises in these reminders over the coming weeks.

Updates are also being made to the Family Pairing functionality, which already allows parents to set restrictions on their children's accounts. One of the new features will be the "Time Away" option, which will allow parents or guardians to restrict their children's access to TikTok at specific times and schedule this restriction on a recurring basis. Parents will also be enabled to see who their child follows, who follows them, and which accounts they have blocked.

TikTok will continue to use age verification technology, including machine learning, to prevent children under 13 from accessing the app. In this regard, the platform has partnered with telecommunications company Telefónica to explore how to use age information from phone providers to verify users' ages. Google, for its part, has also announced that it will begin using this type of technology to estimate the ages of its users.

The introduction of these new initiatives comes at a time when legislators are increasingly focused on online child safety. Recently, Utah became the first state to enact a law requiring app stores, such as Google and Apple, to verify the ages of users when downloading apps. There are also other laws in different states aimed at blocking children's access to social media, although many have been halted by court rulings.