TikTok announced on Tuesday that they would be establishing a youth council, made up of teenagers, in order to avoid implementing “ineffective or inadequate” safety measures and to gather feed back from teens who use the app.
The app also announced they would be updating their “family pairing” feature, which will allow parents or caregivers to add content filters to their teens’ account.
“Listening to the experience of teens is one of the most important steps we can take to build a safe platform for teens and their families. It helps us avoid designing teen safety solutions that may be ineffective or inadequate for the actual community they’re meant to protect, and it brings us closer to being a strong partner to caregivers as we can better represent teens’ safety and well-being needs,” a blog post by Julie de Bailliencourt, the Global Head of Product Policy at the company, said.
“Later this year we’ll launch TikTok’s global Youth Council, where we will listen to the experiences of those who directly use our platform and be better positioned to make changes to create the safest possible experience for our community,” she continued.
De Bailliencourt told NBC News the youth council was still in the “very early stages.”
”It’s still very early stages, but, again, our goal is that we keep designing really effective products and policies that protect young people, but also enable them to find a voice,” de Bailliencourt said. “And we absolutely need to listen intently to what young people have to say about this.”
Several states have banned TikTok from being used on state or government-issued devices and Montana became the first state to ban the app completely due to national security concerns.
Bailliencourt’s announcement said the youth council would provide a more structured way for teens to share their viewpoints.
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The House Energy and Commerce Committee questioned TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew in March over concerns that the Chinese-owned app had access to Americans’ data.
He avoided directly answering the question, telling Rep. Bob Latta it was a “complex topic.”
“Yes or no? It’s not that complex. Yes or no? Do they have access to U.S. data?” Latta said. Chew then appeared to admit China did have access to such data up until a certain point.
Some lawmakers have come out against banning the app.
Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., claimed in March that calls to ban the app were “racist” towards China.
“Let’s not have a dishonest conversation. Let’s not be racist towards China and express our xenophobia when it comes to TikTok, because American companies have done tremendous harm to American people,” he said.
Fox News’ Brandon Gillespie contributed to this report.
