Multibillion social networking company, TikTok, has warned parents about some online challenges that may cause harm to their children as schools break for long holidays.
TikTok noted that some of these challenges are potentially harmful if children are not supervised by a parent or guardian.
From the recently banned milk crate challenge, charlie charlie, blackout, tooth filing challenge, to the beer basketball challenge, TikTok has added new resources to guide parents on the safety measures to take.
"..the effects and concerns are felt by all – and we wanted to learn how we could develop even more effective responses to better support teens, parents, and educators," read part of the statement from TikTok.
Some of these measures include a dedicated challenges page on the Safety centre which consists of information dedicated for teenagers, parents, guardians and educators. To enhance this, TikTok created an in-app guide to house the information.
"Community members will be directed to this new in-app guide if they attempt to search for content that we have designated as potentially harmful challenges and hoaxes. Searches for content that violates our Community Guidelines will continue to be blocked, with this in-app guide being displayed instead," read part of the statement from Tiktok.
Further, the new in-app guide helps parents and teen users to follow a four-step process for engaging with online challenges.
This includes: stop, think, decide and act. For those challenges deemed to place others at risk, parents are urged to report or flag as dangerous.
For example the Charlie Charlie - a demonic game that gained a cult-like following with a number of youths taking part in the challenge around the world.
The game involved crossing two pens to create a grid with sectors labelled either yes or no- and then invoking a supernatural entity dubbed Charlie. The person asks a question, such as "are you here" and if the pen rotates, then it means that the entity is present.
The game which gained worldwide attraction led to over 1.6 million tweets over the challenge with a number of school children participating.
Further, the mix crate challenge saw millions of youths put their lives at risk all in the name of fun and trying to keep up with the trend.
TikTok has affirmed its willingness to secure its platform away from harmful content in order to continue attracting a global audience with over a billion users worldwide.
According to a recent report by Apptopia, the Chinese short-video platform overtook global giant Facebook as the most downloaded social media app.
