TikTok is designed to make content easy to find, easy to share and hard to ignore. The European Commission says that approach should stop at children, arguing the platform fails to protect teenagers leaving them exposed to potential predators.
The platform does not do enough to protect minors, the European Commission has found. On Friday, the EU executive sent preliminary findings to the micro-video social media giant saying it is in breach of Digital Services Act (DSA) for its poor safety standards when it comes to under-18s.
This is the third big crackdown announcement against Big Tech by the Commission this week following fines for AliExpress and Google.
Although TikTok has some protection protocols in place, these fall far short of what is required. Commission officials hinted that despite some default settings and an ongoing discussion with the company, there are concerns about the underlying business model. Tiktok’s engagement model is inherently built around making profiles endlessly shareable and findable, something that the Commission believes should not apply to children.
Not so private
The biggest problem according to the Commission is that minors can choose to set their account to “public”. That means any user, even those without a TikTok account, can view their content. For older teens, 16 –17 years old, this content can be pushed even harder through “recommender channels” — the so-called For You Feed.
This could expose minors too young to understand the consequences to contact from potential predators, cyberbullying and the creation of a life-long digital footprint.
You might be interested
“Even when minors choose private accounts, they can be easily found through their profile photos and the ‘following’ and ‘followers’ lists of other users,” said the Commission. All this is contrary to DSA rules.
The Commission wants younger minors’ accounts by default only visible to users they have 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.”
No fine. Yet
Officials said that Tiktok is no more or less cooperative than any other platform and that the Commission engages in a constant dialogue with platforms. “Tiktok has a certain track record of trying to come to solutions that do not lead to a fine. A preliminary finding is a robust statement that a company is in violation, but that doesn’t mean we stop talking,” said one official. DSA fines can be up to six per cent of a provider’s global annual turnover.
TikTok pushed back on the Commission’s assessment, saying its protections for younger users are already among the strongest in the industry. “Teen accounts have more than 50 preset privacy and safety features, informed by experts, from the moment they set up an account,” the platform’s spokesperson said.
The company pointed out that accounts belonging to users under 18 are private by default and that younger teens cannot use direct messaging or have their content recommended in the For You feed. TikTok added that protecting minors online is a shared goal and said it would continue to engage constructively with the Commission while reviewing the preliminary findings.
Investigation goes on
The Commission’s preliminary findings are part of its investigation of TikTok’s compliance with the DSA, launched on 19 February 2024. It 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”.
TikTok will have the opportunity to look at the Commission’s documentation and may respond in writing. Preliminary findings do not pre-judge the ultimate outcome.
Other DSA investigations into addictive design, access to public data for researchers, advertising transparency, and the so-called “rabbit hole effect” are ongoing.
TikTok does not publish standalone global revenue figures, making the size of any potential fine difficult to calculate precisely. According to analyst estimates, the platform generated around $33.1 billion in revenue in 2025. If the European Commission were ultimately to impose the maximum penalty allowed under the Digital Services Act – up to 6% of global annual turnover – the fine could reach almost $2bn (over €1,7bn). In practice, however, regulators rarely impose the maximum penalty available under the law.
