Written evidence submitted by TikTok
Introduction
TikTok is pleased to submit evidence to the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee's inquiry into Children’s TV and Video Content.
TikTok's purpose is to inspire creativity and bring joy. We want the platform to be a place where everyone in the UK, regardless of background or circumstance, can be their authentic self. Cultivating and showcasing high-quality, original British-made content is a crucial part of this endeavour.
TikTok is for people who are over the age of 13, and the platform employs a comprehensive range of safety and age assurance measures, including technology-based detection, proactive moderation and ongoing user education, to keep under 13s off the platform.
Whilst, given TikTok's age restrictions, children's television content is not prevalent on the platform, we are proud to support the UK's world-renowned creative industries. From pioneering animation to literature, music, and educational programming, the UK has an exceptional legacy of producing content that informs, inspires, and entertains young audiences across generations.
At TikTok, we recognise that the way audiences discover and engage with entertainment content, media and news is rapidly evolving, with an increasing emphasis on short-form, interactive, and community-driven content. As a platform with more than 30 million monthly active users in the UK, we are committed to helping ensure the UK's distinct heritage in this area is represented effectively and continues to thrive in a rapidly changing digital landscape.
In this submission, TikTok will outline our commitment to:
TikTok's user profile and safety tools
It is important to state that TikTok is a platform for those aged 13 and over. We do not allow, nor do we want, children under the age of 13 to use TikTok. Protecting younger users and preventing underage access is a core business priority. The platform employs a comprehensive range of safety and age assurance measures, including technology-based detection, proactive moderation and ongoing user education, to keep under 13s off the platform. TikTok is the only major platform to regularly publish the number of users under 13 that we remove, as part of our publicly available quarterly Transparency Reports. This reflects our ongoing commitment to accountability and industry leadership in safeguarding young audiences online.
In addition, TikTok’s Family Pairing parental controls feature gives parents and guardians the tools they need to set boundaries and tailor their teenagers’ experience on the platform. Since launching Family Pairing five years ago, we have continually evolved and expanded this provision in response to feedback from families, as well as guidance from child safety experts, educators, and mental health organisations. The feature now allows parents to manage screen time, restrict access to certain content, and decide who their teen can interact with.
This year, we have strengthened these measures even further. Our new Time Away function enables parents to schedule specific periods during which their teens cannot access TikTok, supporting healthy digital habits and encouraging balance. Alongside this, parents can now see who their teen follows, and which accounts they have blocked, providing greater visibility and confidence in how their teen is engaging online.
For teens themselves, we have introduced several new features designed to encourage mindful use and positive digital wellbeing. Our new wind-down mode interrupts the feeds of under-18 users who are on TikTok at 10pm with a full-screen takeover, prompting them to switch off. Additionally, teens registered on TikTok do not receive push notifications at night - a measure designed to promote better sleep habits and minimise unnecessary digital stimulation.
Together, these tools form part of TikTok’s wider commitment to creating a safe, age-appropriate environment for young people. We will continue to invest in technology, transparency, and collaboration with families, experts, and policymakers to ensure that our approach evolves in line with the best available research and the needs of our users.
Championing British creators and British content
We are pleased to share further detail on the range of content areas, sub-communities, creators, and partners that make up TikTok’s rich and diverse creative ecosystem - much of which originates in the UK.
At TikTok, we want every UK user not only to have the opportunity to consume high-quality, original British content, but also to be inspired and empowered to create it. TikTok has become an important space for discovery, creativity, and storytelling, for both established names and emerging voices. We are proud that British creators use the platform to entertain, educate and share their experiences and expertise with the wider world. This includes globally successful music artists like Sam Ryder, freestyle footballers such as Liv Cooke, and educators like NHS consultant, Dr Karan Rajan - who helped millions of users learn about the Covid-19 vaccine programme.
Because anyone with passion and a phone can become a creator on TikTok, the platform reflects the extraordinary depth and breadth of British life - spanning every region, background, and community. The content produced for our platform represents a living, evolving snapshot of the United Kingdom: its humour, creativity, particularities and eccentricities. To bolster this further, our Creator Rewards Programme was established to incentivise and recognise creators who produce high-quality, original content. The scheme rewards originality, duration, and quality, ensuring creators are compensated for content that drives meaningful engagement.
We also recognise the importance of local relevance in shaping cultural identity and creative opportunity. Content is often most impactful when the distance between its creator and audience is small, which is why we ensure that a significant proportion of videos shown on UK users’ For You feeds are from creators based in the UK. This helps strengthen local creative economies, providing homegrown talent with visibility and the means to sustain their work.
Beyond entertainment, TikTok continues to expand opportunities for learning and discovery. We have developed new tools and experiences to help users - particularly teens - engage with educational and informative content in positive, age-appropriate ways. The UK was the first country in Europe to gain access to TikTok’s STEM Feed, a dedicated space for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics content. Positioned alongside the For You feed, it opens a gateway to verified educational material from trusted experts, with all videos reviewed by two independent fact-checking organisations to ensure accuracy and reliability. Since its launch, the STEM Feed has had a measurable impact: 22.5% of UK teens now use it weekly, contributing to a 40% increase in the creation of UK STEM content, which has been viewed over 31 million times. The feed features a range of inspiring British creators, including big.manny1 who is inspiring young scientists with his own experiments, physicist particleclara who shares her work on The Large Hadron Collider at CERN and NewScientist magazine taking us on a journey into space.
One of TikTok’s most celebrated and impactful creative communities is #BookTok, a movement that is working to reignite a passion for reading, including among younger audiences. With over 35 million #BookTok videos posted to date, the community connects a vibrant and diverse network of readers, authors, publishers, and educators. Research by the Publishers Association found that 59% of 16–25-year-olds said BookTok had helped them “discover a passion for reading,” while 49% had visited a physical bookshop to buy a title they discovered on the platform.
We firmly believe that engaging online content results in positive local, offline action. A study by Oxford economics found that 60% of British TikTok users had visited somewhere, purchased a product or otherwise engaged in their community based on something watched on the platform. That's why, in 2024, we partnered with the National Literacy Trust to launch physical BookTok Bookshelves in areas of the country with low literacy rates.
TikTok is also a place where distinctive elements of regional and national British culture, language and history can reach new audiences. Creators such as Bethany Davies and Nicky Gamble are part of a new generation of young people using the platform to keep the Welsh language alive; young farmers like Brianna Watson and Josh Stafford share their insight on animal welfare, food supply chains and rural life; Nathan Evans and the The Longest Johns have taken sea shanties from traditional taverns to the UK charts; whilst Shae and Aaron Smith have amassed 2.3M followers unearthing fossils on England's Jurassic Coast.
Together, these examples illustrate TikTok’s role as both a platform for cultural preservation and a driver of creative innovation. From literature and science to music and rural life, TikTok provides a unique space where British talent can flourish, local stories can reach new audiences and teenage users can engage with high-quality content that entertains, informs, and inspires.
Partnering with publishers and facilitating access to reliable news content
TikTok is also an increasingly important platform for established content producers to expand their reach and engage with new audiences. As an established partner to a wide range of British publishers, broadcasters, and production companies - including the BBC, ITV and SKY and many others - we provide ongoing support through onboarding expertise, dedicated account management, and enhanced analytic insights that help partners understand audience behaviour and optimise their content strategies. Our collaboration with publishers allows established media organisations to connect with younger demographics who are discovering news, entertainment, and educational material primarily through digital platforms. TikTok is also playing an increasingly important role as a conduit for publishers to broaden their appeal, build enthusiasm amongst viewers for new programming and help direct viewers to original content on their own streaming platforms.
The BBC is very active on the platform, with over 35 accounts including Newsround and BBC Bitesize, established to create entertainment, news and educational content for younger audiences. TikTok has also become a valuable space for driving civic engagement and promoting understanding of the democratic process among young people. The BBC News account has used the platform to livestream a number of major political moments, ensuring democratic participation is both accessible and relevant to younger viewers. 3.5 million people watched former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announce the General Election live on TikTok, and more than 6 million users tuned in to the BBC’s live coverage on election night. These moments demonstrate the unique power of TikTok to connect established institutions with new generations, boosting connection with and participation in public life.
Where TikTok teams notice clear trends and patterns in how news content is being consumed, we proactively share these insights with publishers so they can make the most effective use of the platform. For instance, we know that user demand for breaking news spikes sharply in the first 30 minutes of an event, with search clicks typically doubling during that window. We also see that publishers who post several times a day achieve significantly stronger performance, receiving video views on average 2.5 times higher than accounts posting fewer than once a day. These signals help guide publishers toward posting habits that better match audience behaviour.
The platform has introduced a number of dedicated features designed to assist publishers in optimising their reach and engagement. One of these is our Article Link feature, which adds a clickable button that publishers can include within a video to direct users to additional reporting. Designed to make it easier for audiences to access extended or contextual information, the tool supports smoother transitions from short-form video to in-depth coverage. It is available exclusively to partners producing recognised journalistic or informational content.
Similarly, TikTok Spotlight is an exciting new promotional solution that allows creators and users on the platform to engage directly with new and existing broadcast programming. The feature allows creators to produce content in relation to new programmes - generating momentum, building excitement and creating collective community investment in what audiences choose to watch.
This year, TikTok partnered with the BBC to promote several new titles using Spotlight. The partnership launched with The Celebrity Traitors, which vividly illustrated the potential power of collaboration and crossover between streaming, traditional television and short form video. A TikTok watch party for fifty of the platform’s biggest entertainment creators on the programme's launch date generated early anticipation, discussion and debate, while a follow-up Q&A with the show’s executive producers allowed creators to share behind-the-scenes insights with both loyal fans and new viewers. Between 8 October and 5 November, more than 32,000 posts were shared in the UK using #Traitors, #CelebrityTraitors, and related tags. Once top creators who consistently posted about the programme were identified, TikTok hosted them at a castle to play The Traitors themselves, further incentivising high-quality, compelling content.
In this way, the Spotlight feature will help to demonstrate that publishers are still able to generate collective, societal excitement about current programming in a way which builds shared experience, sparks new conversations or friendships and shapes the viewing habits of a nation.
Conclusion
Original British content has played a critical role in TikTok’s growth in the UK and continues to be at the heart of the platform’s success. While we remain a platform strictly targeted at over 13s, we recognise that the provision of high-quality youth and educational content is central not only to the healthy development of young audiences, but also to the future strength of the UK’s cultural industries and national identity.
TikTok shares the Committee’s ambition to ensure that future generations continue to have access to outstanding British-made programming - content that informs, inspires. Through our support for British creators, partnerships with publishers and educators, and investment in innovative tools for safety and parental control, TikTok is helping to ensure that young people can discover content that both entertains and educates in ways that are appropriate for their age and needs.
We recognise the importance of boosting the creative economy, the success of which is critical to sustainable production of quality original content. Creators are the lifeblood of our platform. By enabling them to reach global audiences, TikTok helps export UK culture internationally, rooted in a resilient and sustainable domestic creative ecosystem.
Ongoing work with established institutions, from broadcasters to literacy and STEM organisations, demonstrates our commitment to building bridges between traditional and emerging forms of media, ensuring that British talent and creativity continue to thrive online.
TikTok will continue to work closely with creators, parents, educators, and policymakers to ensure that the UK remains a global leader in creative excellence, cultural exports, and audience-appropriate entertainment.