they open their phones? what they see in their own feed is determined by lines of code called algorithms. the algorithms literally learn from what we like and what we scroll through, what we watch and how long we watch it. tiktok wasn t a thing when i was 13, but today it s one of the most popular apps amongst teenagers. i want to know what today s teens see when theyjoin up. i m going to call myself 13, which is the youngest age you can officiallyjoin, though many social media users are much younger than that. i ve got a fresh device, so the algorithm can t pick up any data trail. and i m going to start scrolling. within minutes the algorithm has picked up that i m in scotland, and then glasgow. as a 13 year old, i m presented with this pop up saying that my account is private. it doesn t change what i see,
it s a sponsored funko pop. right. ..that someone s promoting. all these tiktok users are the same age, go to the same school, live in the same city, but they re getting very different targeted content. and how does that make you feel, that they re making a lot of money, essentially, from your information? your private information. i ve never actually - bothered about that, nah. no, i ve never really thought into it. their reactions don t really surprise me, but what s actually going on when they open their phones? what they see in their own feed is determined by lines of code called algorithms. the algorithms literally learn from what we like and what we scroll through, what we watch and how long we watch it. tiktok wasn t a thing when i was 13, but today it s one of the most popular apps amongst teenagers. i want to know what today s teens see when theyjoin up. i m going to call myself 13, which is the youngest age you can officiallyjoin,
tiktok still allows these, if the user has agreed. we asked the big platforms if this new rule meant they ve stopped collecting data on under 18s, too. tiktok and youtube are still collecting data on this age group, though youtube says it will reduce the amount it s collecting. we didn t get a clear answerfrom facebook, which owns instagram. what s clear is the new code doesn t stop companies collecting personal data on under 18s. ad tech and big tech sometimes know more about a young person than their parents do. and that can be in ways that might get them in trouble with their parents. heather burns is a digital rights activist. she says uk data protection laws didn t need strengthening, theyjust need better enforcement.
i want to know what today s teens see when they when theyjoin up. i m going to call myself 13, which is the youngest age you can officiallyjoin, though many social media users are much younger than that. i ve got a fresh device, so the algorithm can t pick up any data trail. and i am going to start scrolling. within minutes, the algorithm has picked up that i m in scotland, and then glasgow. as a 13 year old, i m presented with this pop up, saying that my account is private. it doesn t change what i see, but it limits who can see any videos i post. and then another pop up. this one nudges a 13 year old user to help tiktok make money, by keeping personalised ads switched on. last year, tik tok s parent
company made £25 billion. this lawyer says the whole point of keeping people online longer is it allows platforms like tiktok to harvest increasing amounts of data. the more you use tiktok, the more it learns about you. the more you interact with the programme, the more data it is able to collect. so the algorithms are able to more specifically target you, based upon what it is you re watching, what you like, what you didn t like. the wall streetjournal investigated this. they created automated accounts, posing as teenagers. when they searched for explicit content, they were fed more and more of it. tiktok said this experiment in no way represented the behaviour or viewing habits of a real person. there are several pending legal cases being brought here, and in the us, about the collection of children s data.