EU Charges TikTok over child safety failures under digital rules

The European Commission has issued preliminary findings accusing TikTok of breaching the EU's Digital Services Act over how it protects children online.

The European Commission has issued preliminary findings accusing TikTok of breaching the EU’s Digital Services Act over how it protects children online. Regulators say TikTok’s account settings fall short of DSA safety standards, letting children make their accounts public and potentially exposing them to cyberbullying or contact from predators.

The charges mark the fourth set of allegations against TikTok in two years, brought under a law that requires major tech platforms to do more to tackle illegal and harmful content. This latest finding zeroes in specifically on minors’ account settings.

The Commission’s concerns do not stop at public accounts. Even private accounts are not fully safe, regulators say, since children can still be easily located through other users’ “following” and “followers” lists, visible even to people without a TikTok account.

Investigators found that teens aged 13 to 15 could switch from private to public with little friction, while accounts belonging to 16 and 17-year-olds stayed visible to anyone online by default.

TikTok has pushed back on the findings. The company said teen accounts come with more than 50 preset privacy and safety features, shaped by outside experts from the moment an account is created. It added that under-18 accounts are private by default, and that TikTok is among the only platforms where younger teens can not use direct messaging or have their posts surface in others’ feeds.

The Commission wants stricter defaults going forward. It believes TikTok should adjust settings so that minors’ content is visible only to users the minor has specifically approved, rather than being public by default.

TikTok now has a chance to respond before any final decision is made. The findings are preliminary, giving the company an opportunity to answer the allegations before the Commission issues a final ruling. If confirmed, TikTok could face fines of up to 6% of its global annual turnover.

EU tech chief Henna Virkkunen framed the case as part of a broader principle. She said the Digital Services Act requires platforms to build protections for minors directly into how their services are designed, and holds them accountable when they fail to do so. A high level of protection, she added, should not be something users opt into, it should simply be the default.

This is not TikTok’s only regulatory headache in Brussels. The platform is also facing separate EU scrutiny over allegedly addictive design features like infinite scroll and autoplay.