When Kids Mode Isn't For Kids: Investigating TikTok's "Under 13 Experience"

Abstract: TikTok, the social media platform that is popular among children and adolescents, offers a more restrictive "Under 13 Experience" exclusively for young users in the US, also known as TikTok's "Kids Mode". While prior research has studied various aspects of TikTok's regular mode, including privacy and personalization, TikTok's Kids Mode remains understudied, and there is a lack of transparency regarding its content curation and its safety and privacy protections for children. In this paper, (i) we propose an auditing methodology to comprehensively investigate TikTok's Kids Mode and (ii) we apply it to characterize the platform's content curation and determine the prevalence of child-directed content, based on regulations in the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). We find that 83% of videos observed on the "For You" page in Kids Mode are actually not child-directed, and even inappropriate content was found. The platform also lacks critical features, namely parental controls and accessibility settings. Our findings have important design and regulatory implications, as children may be incentivized to use TikTok's regular mode instead of Kids Mode, where they are known to be exposed to further safety and privacy risks.