TikTok is turning into a major platform for child sexual exploitation in the United States, according to law enforcement officials, with predatory adults increasingly finding it easier to contact and manipulate minors through the Chinese app.
“Child sex offenders will gravitate toward where there are children. Pedophiles prefer looking at videos,” he added. Billions of videos are uploaded to the app every month, with numerous minors doing all kinds of things, including talking about personal lives.
TikTok officially only allows individuals who are 13 and older to open an account. Users younger than 16 years are also not allowed to use the direct messaging feature which allows people to converse with each other privately. However, children can still falsify their age and gain access to such features.
For instance, Grady Moffett Sr., 42, is currently in a county jail in Fort Worth, Texas, on charges related to alleged sexual assault. He was able to strike up romantic conversations with a 14-year-old girl.
Both of them professed love for each other in public comments at the platform. The duo communicated with each other using TikTok’s direct messaging feature, he admitted to The Wall Street Journal.
TikTok’s Failure to Implement Robust Safeguards
Seara Adair, a TikTok content creator, is worried about child sexual content proliferating across the platform. In March last year, Adair was tagged with a video of a pre-teen who was completely naked and doing “inappropriate things,” she said to Forbes.“There’s quite literally accounts that are full of child abuse and exploitation material on their platform, and it’s slipping through their AI,” Adair said.
The Epoch Times has reached out to TikTok for comment.