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13.06.26

TikTok’s parental controls fail to protect children from eating disorder, suicide and self harm content

*** Trigger warning: this article contains references to suicide, self harm and eating disorders. If you are affected by any of these issues, ways of accessing support are listed below  ***

Investigation finds UK child accounts exposed to extremely harmful content despite use of ‘Restricted Mode’ safety setting

The UK’s Online Safety Act requires platforms to keep children safe from content that promotes self harm, suicide and eating disorders. 

We have investigated how well TikTok is living up to this requirement and our findings raise serious concerns about their compliance with the law. 

We created four TikTok accounts in the UK, each registered as a 13-year-old. 

On all four accounts, we enabled what TikTok calls ‘Restricted Mode’ before any searches were conducted. TikTok markets this to parents as a tool that can ‘Restrict your teen's exposure to content that may not be appropriate or comfortable for them.’  With it turned on, they say they aim ‘to only show content that’s comfortable for all audiences.’

We set up accounts in the names of Saskia and Florence which initially searched for weight loss terms such as ‘#skinny’ and ‘#thin’ and afterwards searched for a commonly used abbreviation for anorexia. This was on purpose: first we searched for phrases you can imagine lots of teens might use that do not directly reference harmful material, and only after this did we search for phrases directly related to eating disorders. 

We also set up two accounts in the names of Libby and Clara which initially searched for terms such as ‘#sad’ and ‘#depressed’ and after this searched for terms directly associated with self harm. A full list of all the terms searched for is given in the Methodology section at the end. 

Harmful eating disorder content shown immediately

The very first videos that Saskia and Florence were shown were deeply troubling.  They both searched for ‘#skinny’ - the first search they had carried out on the platform - and were shown content promoting anorexia. This material was just one click away once they had set up their accounts. 

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.

Saskia and Florence spent just three or four minutes looking at the search results for the pro-anorexia term #anaa. In that short time they 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. 

Self harm content

When Libby and Clara searched for ‘#sad’, ‘#depressed’ and ‘#depression’, they 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.

When Libby and Clara directly searched for self harm content, they were shown posts that directly 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. 

TikTok actively suggested other search terms that Clara might be interested in. ‘Others have searched for “cvts tutorial”’, it said, unambiguously encouraging self harm. 

Conclusion

Social media companies encourage parents to use the various tools they offer as a way of keeping their children safe online. Indeed, TikTok, Meta, Google and Snapchat have all shifted in recent years away from making changes to the design of their products to introducing tools that users can opt to use, particularly parental controls, switching the emphasis from platforms to parents as the first line of defence against online harms. 

In TikTok’s case, ‘Restricted Mode’ is one of the main methods they promote of reducing children’s exposure to inappropriate content. Parents who enable the feature in the belief that it will shield their children from harmful material would likely be appalled to learn that newly created accounts registered as 13 year olds were still shown search suggestions and content promoting self harm, eating disorders and suicide. 

Our test accounts were set up as 13 year olds, but the problem extends far beyond this age group. TikTok is regularly used by much younger children: Ofcom, the UK’s media regulator, found that a third of children aged 5-7 are already on the platform. But simply banning under-16s from social media would not fix what this investigation uncovered. Anyone using TikTok with its own safety mode enabled, regardless of age, should not be shown a stream of such dangerous content. 

We call on Ofcom to investigate whether TikTok is in breach of the Online Safety Act’s requirement to protect minors from content promoting self harm and eating disorders.

Parental controls are clearly incapable of effectively protecting children online. The real solution lies with requiring platforms like TikTok to be safe by design. Technology companies must earn the right to offer services to under-16s by meeting strict safety standards. Those that fail to meet them should not be permitted to serve children.

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.”

Support

If you are in the UK and affected by the issues in this article, you may find the following resources helpful. 

Crisis

  • Samaritans - call freephone 116 123 or use their webchat
  • Shout crisis text line - text SHOUT to 85258
  • Childline - call freephone 0800 1111 if you’re under 19. The number will not appear on your phone bill

Suicide

Eating disorders

  • Beat - call freephone 0808 801 0677 (England), 0808 801 0432 (Scotland), 0808 801 0433 (Wales), 0808 801 0434 (Northern Ireland), email [email protected] or use their webchat

Methodology

We set up four new TikTok accounts on factory-reset mobile phones in the UK between 29-31 May 2026.  All were given dates of birth that correspond to them being 13 years old.  All switched on ‘Restricted Mode’ and when asked why ticked the box saying ‘want to limit inappropriate content’. 

The accounts in the name of Saskia and Florence both searched for the following terms in the order listed:

  • #skinny
  • #thin
  • #wlmotivation [weight loss motivation]
  • #wltok [weight loss tok]
  • #anaa [a commonly used abbreviation for anorexia]

The account in the name of Libby searched for the following terms in the order listed:

  • #sad
  • #depression
  • #depressedtok
  • #catscratches
  • #cvts [a presumably deliberate misspelling of cuts]
  • #sharm [self harm]
  • #kinfe [a presumably deliberate misspelling of knife]

The account in the name of Clara searched for the following terms in the order listed:

  • #sad
  • #depressed
  • #catscratches
  • #cvts [a presumably deliberate misspelling of cuts]
  • #sharm [self harm]

All of these accounts spent only a short amount of time on the platform looking at search results. Libby spent just over half an hour; the other accounts spent around 10-15 minutes. 

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