TikTok parental controls fail to protect children from suicide, self harm and eating disorder content, investigation finds
UK test accounts registered as 13-year-olds exposed to posts glorifying suicide, self harm and anorexia, despite TikTok's ‘Restricted Mode’ safety setting
Saturday 13th June 2026 – TikTok's flagship parental control to restrict inappropriate content, "Restricted Mode", failed to prevent child accounts from being exposed to content promoting eating disorders and self-harm and romanticising suicide, an investigation by People vs Big Tech has found.
The findings raise serious questions as to whether TikTok is complying with the UK's Online Safety Act, which requires the platform to protect children from harmful content.
Researchers created four new TikTok accounts in the UK, each registered as a 13-year-old [1]. All accounts turned TikTok's ‘Restricted Mode’ setting on, which the company says is designed to ‘restrict your teen's exposure to content that may not be appropriate or comfortable for them’ and aims ‘to only show content that's comfortable for all audiences’.
Despite these protections being switched on, newly created accounts were rapidly shown extremely harmful material.
Two accounts that searched for #skinny were immediately shown videos promoting extreme thinness [2]. When they later searched for a hashtag commonly associated with anorexia, they were shown numerous posts glorifying eating disorders [3].
Two further accounts that searched for hashtags relating to sadness and depression were shown videos referencing suicide [4]. When they later searched for terms directly associated with self harm, they were served content that promoted and glorified self harm [5]. The platform also suggested additional search terms to one of the accounts: ‘Others have searched for “cvts [cuts] tutorial”’, it said, unambiguously encouraging self harm.
The investigation found that TikTok served up this material after only a short period on the platform. One account spent just over 30 minutes reviewing search results, while the other three spent between 10 and 15 minutes.
We call on Ofcom to investigate whether TikTok is complying with its obligations under the Online Safety Act to protect children from content promoting suicide, self-harm and eating disorders.
Ava Lee, Executive Director of People vs Big Tech said:
Parents are repeatedly encouraged to rely on parental controls to help keep their children safe online. We were shocked that within minutes on the platform, with these supposed safeguards switched on, TikTok served up posts about anorexia, self harm and suicide.
Parents would be horrified by what we found.
Despite how much social media platforms push their parental controls, it is clear that TikTok’s do not work. The government now has an opportunity to make sure platforms are safe for children, before they have access to them.
Leanda Barrington-Leach, Executive Director of 5Rights Foundation said:
This research demonstrates once again that flagship corporate child safety measures are too often little more than a PR exercise, shifting the burden onto parents without making their services meaningfully safer or better for children. So long as tech companies can pick and choose how they comply with the law, children will be at the mercy of corporate profits.
What we need is clear: services that are independently certified as safe for kids, by design and default, before they are licensed for roll-out, together with robust sanctions against companies that put children in harm's way.
Parents may not be able to trust big tech companies to deliver on their promises, but they should be able to trust the UK government to do so.
TikTok did not respond to our request for comment but in response to similar allegations made earlier this year has said "Ensuring that TikTok continues to be safe for our community is our most important work, and teen accounts on TikTok have more than 50 preset features and settings designed specifically to support their safety and wellbeing.”
Notes to editors
[1] Methodology
- Four new TikTok accounts were created in the UK between 29 and 31 May 2026 on factory-reset mobile phones.
- All accounts were registered as 13-year-olds.
- "Restricted Mode" was enabled on every account before any searches took place.
- Two accounts searched for hashtags linked to weight-loss and then a hashtag linked to an eating disorder.
- Two accounts searched for hashtags linked to depression and then hashtags linked to self-harm.
- The accounts spent between approximately 10 and 30 minutes reviewing search results.
[2] The very first posts that the two accounts that searched for #skinny were shown promoted eating disorders. The first video depicted an extremely thin girl with the text ‘you can always be thinner’ and the hashtag ‘#ana’, a widely used abbreviation for anorexia. The accompanying audio repeated the message: ‘you can always be thinner, look better’. The second video showed an extremely thin girl with the voiceover ‘nothing tastes as good as skinny feels’, a phrase associated with the glorification of extreme thinness. This material was just one click away once they had set up their accounts.
[3] In just a few minutes, the two accounts that searched for #anaa, a commonly used term for anorexia were shown posts saying ‘how it feels going past 24h’ accompanied by joyful music and images, a post with the text ‘feeling like you’re about to faint’ accompanied by images of swans in the sunlight, several posts of near empty fridges with text about how the poster was looking forward to moving out of home so their fridge could look like this and many, many other examples.
[4] The two accounts that searched for ‘#sad’, ‘#depressed’ and ‘#depression’ were shown videos that talked about suicide. One stated ‘No one cares about your life until you take it’ with the hashtag ‘#commit’. Others indicated suicide with text saying ‘you can always [...] beg not to wake up tmrw’ over a video taken from a high rise balcony where the camera moves out over the edge to indicate someone jumping off. Another had text saying ‘I’m struggling but it’s fine cause’ accompanied by a video of a bridge over a river indicating the possibility of jumping off.
[5] The two accounts that searched for self harm content were shown posts that promoted self harm. For example, both accounts were served three near-identical posts within minutes of joining the platform that said ‘Take some of this. It will [or it’ll] calm you [or u] down’, accompanied by images of a red line being drawn mimicking the image of slashed skin. One post gave instructions on how to self harm, showing images of objects that can burn such as candles and an iron together with the text ‘what I do when my parents take away every sharp objects [sic].’ Disturbingly, another post said ‘I need me a girl that cvts [cuts] and [can] go on cam [camera].’
Other content included an image of razors with the text ‘let me under your skin’, and multiple posts glorifying self harm, with text saying ‘how it sounds getting up in the morning with fresh cvts’ or ‘how it felt discovering sh [self harm]’ accompanied by calm images of nature or flowers blooming.
Media contact: Gabriella Smith - [email protected] / 07754 054906
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