‘63pc teens exposed to hoaxes online experienced mental health problems’

ISLAMABAD: An international study conducted by TikTok revealed that 31pc of teens exposed to hoaxes online had experienced a negative impact, with 63pc saying it was affecting their mental health.

After the study, TikTok has strengthened its protection efforts by removing warning videos involving self-harm hoaxes.

A survey was conducted with participation from 10,000 people including teens, parents and teachers from Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Germany, Italy, Indonesia, Mexico, United Kingdom, United States and Vietnam, while experts were consulted from around the world.

According to TikTok, it will continue to explore and implement additional measures on behalf of the community and social media awareness campaigns like #AapSafeTohAppSafe will be launched to promote safety on the platform.

Recently, an online safety centre in Urdu was launched that provided resources, guidelines and policies to educate more users on safety, security and privacy.

TikTok has also held public webinars with leading publications in Pakistan to promote safety and continued to make efforts towards making the platform a safe space for its users.

The survey study was commissioned to Praesidio Safeguarding, an independent safeguarding agency, to write a report to capture key findings and recommendations.

According to the survey, online challenges or dares typically involve people recording themselves doing something difficult, which they share online to encourage others to repeat. Some of these activities are fun and safe such as the Ice Bucket Challenge or #BlindingLightsChallenge, but some promote harmful behaviour that includes the risk of serious injury.

Responding to a query about a recent online challenge, 48pc teens said recent challenges they had seen were safe, categorising them as fun or light-hearted, 32pc included some risk but were still safe, 14pc were described as risky, while 3pc of online challenges were described as “very dangerous”.

Whereas, 0.3pc of teens said they had taken part in a challenge they categorised as really dangerous. The study added that suicide and self-harm hoaxes were lies intentionally planted to trick people into believing something that was not true and the purpose of a malicious hoax was to spread fear and panic.

It stated that 56pc of parents said they would not mention a hoax unless a teen had mentioned it first, and 37pc of parents felt hoaxes are difficult to talk about without prompting interest in them.

TikTok is building existing safeguards by strengthening protection efforts, removing warning videos and expanding enforcement measures.