TikTok advertises itself as an app for people of ages 13 and above, but despite this, we see cases of inappropriate content finding its way out there all too often.
While there are tons of great filters on TikTok, a mother was horrified to discover that a supposedly innocent effect contained a much darker and completely inappropriate video after her young daughter, of all people, stumbled upon it. According to Michelle, her daughter was going to make a “funny video” making use of the library of filters available on the app — but unfortunately, the funny video had to be put on hold.
One of these was a Peter Griffin filter — Michelle shows the icon for it and you can clearly see the Family Guy character’s face. However, when she taps, rather than being met with Peter Griffin, a video of a man flashes on screen. Covering the phone screen below the guys waist Michelle asks the audience, “what do you think he’s gonna do guys? What do you think he’s showing?” Unfortunately it’s all too obvious what it is the guy is showing, and it’s so creepy to think there are children on the app who may be exposed to this kind of content.
It’s bad enough to think that 13 year olds could potentially see such a video, but it gets worse; according to an article from The Guardian, roughly 1.4 million children under the age of 13 also use the app. Although TikTok does have content filters and a “restricted mode” which, according to TikTok Support “limits exposure to content that may not be suitable for everyone,” the truth is things slip through the cracks as demonstrated by Michelle’s video.
The comments were equally as disgusted — apparently it even made its way onto some people’s trending section for filters. People were quick to call out how irresponsible it was to allow such content to be so easily findable, let alone on TikTok full stop.
As of the time of writing, it does appear as though the filter has been taken down, so at least there’s some comfort in that. But again, you have to wonder how it got on there in the first place. Not only that, but this isn’t the first time something like this has happened, you may remember the infamous “777 filters,” which hid NSFW content for surprised users to find. More recently, a filter showing a photoshopped nude of Markiplier was up on the app for around 24 hours before being taken down.
It seems like TikTok has a serious problem with some of this stuff finding its way onto the platform, and it’s an issue that isn’t going to go away on its own, unfortunately. Currently, the best thing to do if you ever find an inappropriate filter like the one Michelle showed is to report it in the app, and hope action is taken swiftly to remove it.