What Happened When A 12-Year-Old Took Legal Action Against TikTok?
The COVID-19 pandemic has changed our lives, and in the market, most of the companies have faced huge losses. In the same way, it wasn’t an easy period for one of the most popular video-sharing app TikTok. First, it got banned in different regions, and then when it was becoming a popular app, a 12-year-old girl took legal action against them. The London judge has given the girl anonymity to carry on the case and drag TikTok to court over allegations that the company is violating privacy laws.
The case was supported by the children’s commissioner for England Anne Longfield and she believes that TikTok is violating some of the basic protection laws and this case can make them take necessary measures to protect kids’ privacy and information.
The girl who claimed this thinks that her privacy rights and those of the people who liked her on TikTok have been infringed in a way that is dangerous for them. She says that no one’s privacy rights are respected on TikTok and they should do something about it.
Surprisingly, this is not the first time TikTok has faced this issue related to children’s privacy. TikTok was fined $5.7 million for the way they are handling children’s data. However, in their defense, the TikTok makers say that privacy and safety of the kid's data is their top priority and there are robust policies, rules, and technologies for it.
Where every social media app passes statements like this, it has become impossible to believe them because each of them is facing such issues. From Facebook’s Cambridge case to this TikTok case, it is right to consider that our kids are not safe when they are doing stuff online on their favorite social media apps. It can be seen that there are several cases where doubts have been raised that these social media apps are not protecting their consumers’ rights of privacy.
It is happening with kids and teens especially, and one of the main reasons is that they don’t know how much information they should put on their profiles. They are too much indulged in their social media world that they do all kinds of risky things including sharing stuff that can be humiliating for them in the future. Though social media apps need to act on their rules and policies of privacy, still it is to be considered that the internet is a place where things stay forever. Our kids don’t understand this and get easy and open with their profiles.
Are Our Kids Safe? What to Do About It?
If you are a caretaker or a parent, you might be worried after reading about this. With kids, there is so much less that you can do to stop them from doing things that they love but still, there are a few ways to handle the situation and teach about the right and wrong of the social world.
Though these apps must understand their responsibility and the law must make it happen, but at the same time, our kids also need to be taught to be on the safe side. Hopefully, this lawsuit and other cases against these applications can make things better. But, let’s see what parents can do on their side to make sure their kids are safe on their own.
Guide Them at The Very Start
When they get their cell phones and you know they are about to sign up on the social media apps as their friends do, you need to sit with them and guide them. Sit with them through the process and tell them how they should fill in each column carefully. Tell them about the information that is optional and it might work out even if they don’t put it there. If you are with them from the very start, they will come to you if they sense something wrong.
Monitoring Their Social Media
Another thing that is necessary to do when you are dealing with the privacy issues of your kids on social media, is to monitor their social media. For fun, they do all sorts of things and some of the things are very dangerous and risky such as sharing sexual content. With such things, they are always at the risk of being blackmailed, bullied, and betrayed. To make sure they don’t face such things, you need to monitor their activities and find out if they are doing such sort of stuff.
To monitor your kids, you need the best monitoring app. If you do research, you will see that Mobistealth is the best monitoring app that provides you all the information about the things your kids are doing.
It’s important to make your kids understand that you are using the cell phone spy app on their phones to protect them from harmful online dangers and not invade their privacy. When kids are informed about the monitoring app installed on their phones, they won’t feel offended or betrayed. Rather, they will feel that their privacy is being valued.
You can monitor their social media accounts, track their location, know their messages, and track their calls. It will also give you notifications when there is something wrong. Using Mobistealth is the best choice you can make to track your kids.
Communicate with Them
If you are going to protect them from these social media hazards, the best thing to do is to talk to them. Share the news and latest cases with them and show them how other people are complaining about it. Show them the stories of kids who have suffered from issues related to social media especially about privacy. The more you involve them in these communications and trust them with sharing this information, the more they will listen to you. Tell them that they can enjoy as much as they want but being careful is necessary and that they can come to you whenever they feel something is wrong.
Looking at the above cases, it is very important to make important arrangements to guide the kids about the current situation and how they need to be careful when they are using social media. There are a lot of things that they don’t know and it is parents’ responsibility to bring awareness to their kids.
More on the news:
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-55497350
