Getting Age Deverified on TikTok

Most platforms used to only have a minimum age limit. If you were under the age limit, you couldn't use the platform. This was terribly enforced, as you could just tell the platform you were older than you actually are and get let in. The only times you needed to do any sort of verification was if your account got taken down for being underage, to prove that you aren't.

It isn't that simple anymore. Now, you typically need to do advanced verification to verify that you're 18 or older. Platforms like YouTube have started rolling out AI models that will find ways to detect if you're under 18, and require verification if the models think you are.

Now, I would like to note that when this happens, you can continue to use the platform. Verifying your age is entirely optional. However, you'll be locked out of some features as well as some videos will be unavailable to you. Usually you have to verify your government ID to get said features to work again.

This happened to me with TikTok last night.

Verification

Last night I got a popup that read:

Some features are unavailable because of age restrictions. Check your inbox for details.

And sure enough, I couldn't use some features until I verified my identity. One different thing is that on TikTok you only needed to be 16 instead of 18^[1]. There were 2 options for verifying age:

• Credit card authorization
• ID and selfies

If you did a credit card authorization, it would be the fastest method. I'm guessing the point is that kids don't have credit cards, but kids credit cards have existed for some time now. I know people who had to use a CashApp card because their parents wouldn't let them have access to their actual account. The authorization worked by sending you a charge, which would be refunded. This makes TikTok one step ahead of the Nintendo Wii U, which does not refund you for the age verification charge.

The other option is to upload your government ID and then take selfies of yourself at various angles. Obviously I'm not going to do that. It says that your ID will be deleted after, but I don't trust that all that information will actually be deleted.

Restrictions

So, what restrictions were put on my account?

Probably the biggest one is the lack of messaging. I cannot reply to people's stories, and people cannot reply to mine. Additionally, nobody can send me videos or direct messages. When you open the send video menu, the only person that appears is myself.

The link to my website in my profile was removed, which I don't think is a bad thing for an under 16 experience. Note that I could still attach links to Instagram, YouTube, and whatever the heck Lemon8 is.

Obviously, I cannot view any videos marked inappropriate by the TikTok systems. Thankfully, this isn't really censoring any political videos, but only genuinely inappropriate videos (for example, news reports that include heavy blood). With that said, I haven't even had this restriction for 24 hours so I don't completely know yet.

Finally, "digital wellbeing" restrictions were put on my account. This includes a 1 hour daily screen time limit, and trying to watch videos after 8pm will only show breathing exercises. However, these are only minor annoyances, as you can easily bypass them just by hitting the ignore button and entering the passcode 1234, which if they want to discourage habitually using the bypass button, why don't they make the passcode random?

Conclusion

To be honest, I don't really care. The only thing that's annoying is being unable to message people, but at the same time it means I won't be awoken to 500 videos from friends. If this happened on a platform such as YouTube maybe I would be more mad.