LONDON — Snapchat is kicking dozens of children in Britain off its platform each month compared with tens of thousands blocked by rival TikTok, according to internal data the companies shared with Britain's media regulator Ofcom and which Reuters has seen. Social media platforms such as Meta's Instagram, ByteDance's TikTok, and Snap Inc.'s Snapchat require users to be at least...
LONDON — Snapchat is kicking dozens of children in Britain off its platform each month compared with tens of thousands blocked by rival TikTok, according to internal data the companies shared with Britain's media regulator Ofcom and which Reuters has seen.
According to the data seen by Reuters, TikTok told Ofcom that between April 2021 and April 2022, it had blocked an average of around 180,000 suspected underage accounts in Britain every month, or around two million in that 12-month period. "We take these obligations seriously and every month in the UK we block and delete tens of thousands of attempts from underage users to create a Snapchat account," the Snap spokesperson said.
Reuters could not determine what protocols are in place to remove underage users once they have accessed the platform and the spokesperson did not spell these out. In 2022, Ofcom's research found 60 per cent of children aged between eight and 11 had at least one social media account, often created by supplying a false date of birth.Risks to young childrenAccording to figures recently published by the NSPCC , Snapchat accounted for 43 per cent of cases in which social media was used to distribute indecent images of children.
Britain, like the European Union and other countries, has been seeking ways to protect social media users, in particular children, from harmful content without damaging free speech.
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