UK investigates TikTok over child safety measures – POLITICO
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UK investigates TikTok over child safety measures
The online safety watchdog is worried about TikTok’s use of "age inference" to guess users’ ages.
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A teenager is photographed using TikTok, the popular video-sharing platform facing increased scrutiny for its alleged failures to protect children from harmful online content. | Anna Barclay/Getty Images
July 16, 2026
7:56 am CET
By
Mizy Clifton
LONDON — The U.K.'s online safety regulator Ofcom on Thursday opened an investigation into TikTok over whether the platform has complied with its duties under the Online Safety Act to protect children from harmful content.
The watchdog's probe will cover concerns raised in its two reports on children's experiences online and age assurance that age inference models used by TikTok, which guess users' ages based on their activity, are not highly effective and may have failed to correctly identify child users.
Under the OSA, platforms must use “highly effective” age assurance to make sure they're not exposing children to harmful content. In its age assurance report published Wednesday, Ofcom said it's concerned about the use of age inference to determine users' ages, and it does not consider that method to be highly effective.
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Ofcom can impose a fine of up to £18 million or 10% of worldwide revenue, whichever is greater, if it finds TikTok in breach of the OSA. The regulator said it would provide an update on the investigation in October.
“We strictly enforce age-appropriate experiences through expert-informed platform rules and advanced age inference technologies, in line with major industry peers,” a TikTok spokesperson said.
“In the eight years since TikTok launched in the U.K., we have invested billions in platform safety. We are confident that we meet our Online Safety Act obligations and will work with Ofcom to demonstrate this,” they added.