Commission preliminary finds TikTok in breach of Digital Services Act for failing to ensure safe accounts for minors

This article is brought to you in association with the European Commission.

Today, the European Commission sent TikTok preliminary findings indicating that TikTok accounts of minors do not meet the safety standards required under the Digital Services Act (DSA). 

On TikTok, minors can choose to set their account as ‘public’. This means that any user, including those without a TikTok account, may be able to view minors’ content. This setting also allows content published by ‘older’ minors (16-17 years old) to be recommended to any other TikTok user through the For You Feed.

This exposure could result in unwanted contact from potential perpetrators and a risk that content can be used for cyberbullying. This feature potentially gives strangers a window into a child’s life. In addition, since what minors publish may stay online forever and follow them into adulthood, the feature comes with risks of potentially life-long consequences.

Even when minors choose private accounts, their accounts can be easily found through the ‘following’ and ‘followers’ lists of other users, and their profile photos remain accessible to anyone, including users without a TikTok account. TikTok’s settings continue to expose them to risks – including unwanted contact, cyberbullying, or predatory behaviour.

Account settings are key to ensure minors are safe online, since they determine who can view their content and who can contact them. Under the DSA, platforms accessible to minors must ensure a high level of privacy, safety, and security on their service. The Commission preliminarily considers that TikTok’s account settings fail to meet this standard, as they expose minors’ accounts and content too widely.    

The Commission preliminarily considers that TikTok – in line with the Guidelines on the protection of minors – should adjust the default settings of minors’ ‘public’ accounts, so that their content is, by default, visible only to TikTok users whom the minor has accepted. While older minors may have the option to share their content with a broader audience on TikTok, the content should under no circumstances be accessible to a global audience outside the platform. Moreover, TikTok should refrain from recommending minors’ content to other TikTok users through the For You Feed.

These preliminary findings do not prejudge the final outcome of the investigation.

Next steps

TikTok now has the possibility to examine the documents in the Commission’s investigation files and reply in writing to the Commission’s preliminary findings. In parallel, the European Board for Digital Services will be consulted. 

If the Commission’s views are ultimately confirmed, the Commission may issue a non-compliance decision, which can trigger a fine determined by the nature, gravity, recurrence, and duration of the infringement. The amount of the fine must be proportionate and shall in no case exceed 6% of a provider’s global annual turnover.

Background

Setting up an account represents one of the first engagements of users, including minors, with a platform. The initial choices made by minors in this process have a significant and potentially lasting impact on their overall experience. In its Guidelines on the protection of minors, the Commission therefore recommends platforms to provide, by default, account settings that ensure the strongest privacy, safety, and security protections and to design minors’ accounts to be safe even when such default settings are modified.  

The Commission’s preliminary findings are part of its formal proceedings to investigate TikTok’s compliance with the Digital Services Act, launched on 19 February 2024. Today’s preliminary findings are based on an in-depth investigation that included an analysis of TikTok’s interface, internal data and documents, as well as interviews with law enforcement officers and experts in the fields of minor protection, child abuse, and neuro-psychology. The Commission relied on the Guidelines on the protection of minors to evaluate TikTok’s compliance with its obligation to ensure a high level of privacy, safety and security for minors.

The investigation also included TikTok’s potentially addictive design, for which preliminary findings were adopted in February of this year. In addition, this investigation covered access to public data for researchers, for which preliminary findings were adopted in October 2025, and advertising transparency, which was closed through binding commitments in December 2025.

This investigation also covers the ‘rabbit hole effect’ of TikTok’s recommender systems and the risk of minors having an age-inappropriate experience due to a misrepresentation of their age. The investigation into these issues is ongoing.