TikTok’s parental controls fail to protect children from suicide, self harm and eating disorder 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 child accounts in UK and EU exposed to extremely harmful content despite use of TikTok’s flagship safety setting
UK and EU law both require platforms such as TikTok to keep children safe online by assessing and mitigating the risk that they encounter harmful content, such as suicide, self harm and eating disorder content.
We have investigated how well TikTok is living up to these requirements and our findings raise serious concerns about their compliance with these laws.
We created 15 TikTok accounts in the UK and the EU, all registered as 13 year olds.
On all accounts, we enabled what TikTok calls ‘Restricted Mode’. 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.’
Some of the accounts investigated eating disorder content. Initially, these accounts searched for terms such ‘#skinny’ and ‘#thin’. Afterwards, they more directly searched for eating disorder content. 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.
Other accounts investigated self harm content. Initially, they searched for terms such as ‘#sad’ and ‘#depressed’ and after this searched for terms directly associated with self harm.
In the UK, the searches were carried out in English. In the EU, the searches were carried out in English, French, German and Spanish. A list of all the search terms used is provided in the Methodology section.
All of the accounts watched only a few minutes of content from each search term.
Accounts for 13 year olds shown harmful eating disorder content even when not directly searching for it
The accounts were shown harmful eating disorder content even when they were not searching directly for it. When searching for terms such as #skinny and #thin and the equivalents in other languages, they were shown posts such as:
- “Not until i feint” overlaid over images of kpop stars fainting while dancing. Shown to an account in the UK searching #wlmotivation, an abbreviation of weight loss motivation.
- “Ill do anything to be thin” with a caption of “might [star emoji] myself til friday”. The star emoji is used in online eating disorder communities to signify starving. Shown to accounts in the EU when searching #schlank (German for slim), #dϋnn (German for thin) and #delgada (Spanish for thin).
- “La sensation après ne pas avoir mangé pendant plusieurs jours et que t au bords du malaise” (“The feeling after not eating for several days and being on the verge of fainting”) accompanied by images and music that imply euphoria. Shown to an account in the EU searching #maigreur (French for thinness).
- “When someone asks me what my workout routine is knowing it’s all the shitting I do that keeps me skinny”, posted by an account whose name started with mia (a known abbreviation of bulimia). Shown to an account in the EU searching #delgada (Spanish for thin).
Accounts for 13 year olds shown suicide ideation and self harm content even when not directly searching for it
The accounts were shown content that talked about suicide when searching for terms such as #sad and #depressed. For example, we were shown posts such as:
- “when it’s getting so bad you start imagining how everyone would react if you weren’t here anymore” or “if you did it”. Shown to accounts in the EU searching #deprimida and #depressiv (Spanish and German for depressed)
- “und keiner checkt wie sehr ich dieses leben aufgeben möchte” (“and nobody realises how much I want to give up this life”). Shown to an account in the EU searching for #traurig (German for sad).
- “I wouldnt commit but I wouldnt mind going to sleep and not waking up”. Shown to accounts in the EU searching for #triste (French for sad) and #deprimada (Spanish for depressed) and with more than a third of a million likes.
We were also shown content about self harm, including a video of bread dough being cut by a razor that was shown to an account in the EU that searched for #depressiv (German for depressed). The link to self harm was made clear by the inclusion of a hashtag widely used in online self harm communities.
Some posts didn’t just reference eating disorders and self harm, but actively promoted them
It can be argued that a distinction should be made between posts that discuss a user’s experiences of eating disorders or self harm and those that actively encourage harmful behaviour in others. Some of the posts the 13 year old accounts were shown clearly crossed this line.
When searching #skinny, we were shown a post saying “Do it scared. bc u deserve what comes with it” overlaid over a video of someone pretending they might vomit.
When searching for a hashtag associated with anorexia we were shown posts implying that it feels great not eating for more than 24 hours including one which had had more than 50,000 likes, giving tips on how to think of the sound of your stomach growling as something good, and suggesting that stopping eating would mean you get good grades at school and get to stay up late.
A post shown to an account set up as a 13 year old glorifying eating disorders
When searching for hashtags associated with self harm we were shown posts implying that self harm feels great, posts that said that cutting yourself will calm you, including one that had had more than 20,000 likes, and posts that gave instructions on how to self harm ‘when my parents take away every sharp objects.’ One post in German instructed the reader to kill themselves.
A post shown to an account set up as a 13 year old which used a hashtag commonly associated with self harm
TikTok suggested harmful search terms
TikTok actively suggested other search terms that the accounts might be interested in. “Others have searched for cvts tutorial” [a misspelling of cuts tutorial] and “Shh cvt tips” [meaning self harm cut tips] it said, unambiguously encouraging self harm.
When searching for #anaa, a term used to mean anorexia, TikTok suggested “anaa meal ideas” and “anaa motivtion” as other searches it could do.
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.
Simply banning minors from social media will 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 and the European Commission to investigate whether TikTok is in breach of the legal requirements 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 should have to 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.
We wrote to TikTok to give them the opportunity to comment on our findings and they said that user safety, especially teens, is their priority and that they have invested in building safer experiences for teens, including more than 50 features and settings designed to protect younger users, as well as moderation technologies that help them remove 99% of violative videos before they are viewed. They later told us that they removed relevant accounts and reduced discoverability of harmful hashtags.
Support
If you are affected by the issues in this article, you may find the following resources helpful.
- Child Helpline International maintains a list of helplines for children available in more than 130 countries
- Mental Health Europe maintains a list of mental health helplines available in European countries
- Safe Food Advocacy Europe maintains a list of eating disorder helplines in EU countries.
Methodology
We set up four new TikTok accounts on mobile phones in the UK between 29-31 May 2026 and eleven new TikTok accounts on mobile phones in the EU between 3-17 August 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 uncomfortable content’.
All the accounts in the UK used English language search terms. In the EU, four searched in English, two in German, two in French and three in Spanish.
The tables below show the search terms that the different language accounts used.
| Not directly linked to eating disorders | Directly linked to eating disorders | |
| English | #skinny#thin#wlmotivation [weight loss motivation]#wltok [weight loss tok] | #anaa [a commonly used abbreviation for anorexia] |
| French | #maigreur#maigre | #proanafrance#tca |
| Spanish | #delgada#flaca | #tca#anaa |
| German | #schlank#dϋnn | #anaa |
| Not directly linked to self harm | Directly linked to self harm | |
| English | #sad#depression or #depressed#depressedtok | #catscratches#cvts [a presumably deliberate misspelling of cuts]#sharm [self harm]#kinfe [a presumably deliberate misspelling of knife] |
| French | #triste | Griffes de chat#zèbre |
| Spanish | #deprimida | #autodaño#cebre#cortarse |
| German | #traurig#depressiv | #ritzen#svv |
All of the accounts spent a small amount of time looking at search results - typically just a few minutes per search term.
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