A warning has been issued to parents after research found that more than two-thirds of children may be regularly exposed online to content which tells them how to look and behave.
Survey findings on children's experiences
According to a survey conducted by Plan International UK, almost a third of girls (32%) and nearly a quarter of boys (23%) reported not dressing or behaving in the ways they wanted to after viewing content online.
Plan's survey of 1,440 seven to 17-year-olds across the UK in February and March this year found seven in 10 girls (70%) and more than two-thirds of boys (67%) regularly saw messages online telling them how they should look, behave, dress or what careers and interests they should pursue. The survey also found around six in 10 (62%) young people want social media companies to do more to remove harmful content.
Testing of fake TikTok accounts
The global charity, which works to advance equality for girls, also tested six fake TikTok accounts and said content feeds for 13 to 16-year-olds became "clearly gendered within the first 20 minutes of use". It added that the platforms could expose users to "increasingly specific and harmful gendered content" after less than two hours of scrolling.
Accounts representing girls were shown videos promoting "unrealistic beauty standards and luxury lifestyles", the Plan research found. The fake boys' accounts were instead served content which the charity described as "glorifying wealth, physical strength and emotional isolation, alongside misogynistic narratives".
They also found one of the accounts – for a 13-year-old girl built around music, dance and drama – ended up being served videos about mental health and feeling sad, followed by suicide, self-harm and substance abuse content. Plan said while the content was reported during testing, it was found by TikTok not to breach community guidelines.
Reactions and calls for action
Kathleen Spencer-Chapman, director of influencing and external affairs at the charity, said the research suggested misogyny "is not confined to the darkest corners of the internet, it is woven into the everyday content that children are fed without asking for it".
She added: "While girls are more likely to recognise and call out sexist content, boys are too often trapped in an online echo chamber where narrow ideas of masculinity centred on money and dominance are normalised. The attitudes shaped online rarely stay online – they influence how young people see themselves, how they treat one another and how they understand the world around them."
She argued children want "safer online spaces where harmful content isn't rewarded by algorithms designed to keep children scrolling", and called on the Government to do more to require tech companies to design social media platforms "that put the safety and wellbeing of young people first".
TikTok did not comment directly on Plan's claim about the content, but said its guidelines prohibit content showing, promoting or sharing plans for suicide or self-harm. A TikTok spokesperson said: "We care deeply about the experience young people have on our platform, which is why we invest heavily in automatic protections for teen accounts and deploy advanced technologies to proactively detect and remove content that violates our Community Guidelines. This 'research' uses fake accounts and loaded search queries to force a pre-determined conclusion, and this is not how real people use TikTok."
A Government spokesperson described the findings as "deeply concerning" and referred to action it is taking on online safety, including the social media ban for under-16s in spring next year, and turning off personalised feeds by default for 16 and 17-year-olds on social media. They added: "In the meantime, we've launched an online safety kids hub to inform parents on how to support their children in recognising this toxic type of content, so that families have the tools to push back against material that can distort young people's sense of self."
