Britain's media regulator Ofcom has opened a probe into TikTok, a month after the government announced that under-16s would be banned entirely from a range of platforms. The investigation will examine how the video-sharing app assesses whether a user is a child and whether it has adequate systems to stop children viewing harmful content.
“Some age-check methods used by social media are not working well enough.” — Kate Davies, Ofcom
At the centre of the regulator's examination is the platform's use of technology known as "age inference," which estimates a user's age from how they behave on the app, such as the videos they watch or the accounts they interact with. Kate Davies, Ofcom's group director for strategy and research, told the BBC's Today programme that some age-check methods used by social media "are not working well enough."
Davies said Ofcom had "serious doubts" about whether such tools can be "highly effective," the standard the regulator requires. The platform, for its part, said it "strictly enforces age-appropriate experiences through expert-informed platform rules and advanced age inference technologies, in line with major industry peers," and that it had invested "billions" in online safety since launching in the UK eight years ago.
The review follows a May assessment by Ofcom that criticised TikTok for not being "safe enough" for children and called for stronger action. It forms part of a broader crackdown on sites failing to prevent children encountering adult content such as pornography and other harmful material. Under the Online Safety Act's children's codes, which took effect last July, sites with such content must use methods like face scans to verify a UK visitor is over eighteen.
The regulator has already been forced to act against dozens of adult sites over suspected or proven non-compliance, including issuing large fines. A TikTok spokesman said the company is "confident that we meet our Online Safety Act obligations and will work with Ofcom to demonstrate it," but the investigation signals that even the largest platforms will face scrutiny as Britain tightens its rules on children's digital safety.
Ofcom's verdict will land on every platform that relies on inference; TikTok is simply first in the dock.
Ofcom is testing a specific proposition: whether behavioural age inference can ever meet a 'highly effective' legal standard. It almost certainly cannot — inference is probabilistic by construction — so the investigation's real function is to force platforms toward hard verification (face scans, ID) and absorb the privacy backlash that follows. TikTok is the test case; the ruling will bind the whole sector.
