TikTok is under more and more pressure in the U.S. and the U.K., so the company is showing that it wants to encourage educational material on its app. The company said on Tuesday that it is bringing its STEM-focused feed to more countries in Europe, starting with the UK and Ireland. The feed was first introduced in the US last year.
For users under 18, the STEM feed will start to show up immediately next to the “For You” and “Following” feeds. In the app’s “content preferences” settings, users over the age of 18 can turn on the STEM feed. The feed has English-language material with subtitles that are automatically translated.
That 33% of users have the STEM feed turned on and a third of kids go to it every week since TikTok launched it in the U.S. last year. Since the feed started, there is 24% more STEM-related information on the app in the U.S. Almost 15 million STEM-related images have been added to the app around the world in the last three years.
To look over all the material on the STEM feed, the company is growing its partnerships with Common Sense Networks and Poynter. Poynter will check the information to see how reliable it is, and Common Sense Networks will look at the material to make sure it fits the STEM feed. Anything that doesn’t meet these two requirements won’t be shown in the STEM news.
Rights groups say that TikTok shows kids and teens harmful material and uses addictive design to keep users engaged for as long as possible. This is happening at the same time that the STEM feed is launched.
The European Union said in February that it was looking into whether TikTok had broken the Digital Services Act. This law has rules to keep people safe online. The commission is looking into whether the app does enough to keep kids from finding inappropriate material and whether the way it’s made makes people more likely to become addicted.
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With today’s news, TikTok is trying to show that it is even more of an educational hub for the millions of young people who use its app. This is to answer lawmakers’ criticisms from all over the world. The company has already used the STEM feed to refute claims that it’s bad for young users. TikTok CEO Shou Chew talked about it in two different hearings in the U.S. Congress, one in March 2023 and one in January 2024.
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