TikTok staff raised child safety concerns, but executives reportedly failed to act

In Brief

TikTok was repeatedly warned by employees about the risks the social media platform posed to children, according to court records obtained NPR. The documents say employees were frustrated with how executives responded to their concerns about risks to children, including sexual exploitation and exposure to suicide-related content.

Depositions of employees filed in March 2026 are shedding new light on TikTok’s child safety practices.

According to NPR, TikTok employees warned that minors were appearing in sexual content that was available for purchase on TikTok, raising concerns that the company could profit from potentially illegal activity. They also flagged that minors were exploiting loopholes to access age-restricted content and hide their activity from parents.

Additionally, the court documents show that TikTok didn’t conduct surveys to determine the age of its users out of concern that it would have to share the results with the Federal Trade Commission.

TikTok, in addition to Meta, Google and Snap, faces hundreds of lawsuits consolidated in federal court. The lawsuits allege that these companies’ platforms harm minors, and that they failed to disclose known risks to young users.

TikTok has reached settlements in several of these cases before they went to trial, including one in Los Angeles where a jury found that Meta and YouTube had designed their platforms to be addictive to young users.

TikTok did not immediately respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment.

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