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The lies and conspiracy theories about Covid-19, which have racked up millions of views and are accessible to young children, have been available on the TikTok social media platform for months.
TikTok accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers who discourage vaccination and peddle myths about Covid survival rates have been uncovered by NewsGuard, an organization that monitors disinformation online.
NewsGuard said it released its findings in June and sent them to the UK government and the World Health Organization (WHO), but the content remained on the platform.
The revelation comes amid renewed concern over the impact of social media on young people, after it was reported that Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, has internal research showing its app is harming teens.
As part of its investigation, NewsGuard said children as young as nine were able to access the content, although TikTok only allows full access to the app to those 13 and older. Three participants in the organization’s research who were under the age of 13 were able to create accounts on the app by entering false dates of birth.
TikTok told The Guardian that it is working diligently to take action on content and accounts that spread disinformation.
Some of the accounts the Guardian saw had posted individual videos containing misinformation about Covid that had attracted as many as 9.2 million views. Misinformation included false comments about side effects of specific brands of Covid vaccine and misleading comparisons between Covid survival rates and vaccine efficacy rates.
Alex Cadier, UK Managing Director of NewsGuard, said: “TikTok’s failure to stop the spread of dangerous fake health information on their app is unsustainable bordering on dangerous. Despite claims that action is being taken against misinformation, the app still allows anti-vaccine content and health hoaxes to spread relatively unhindered.
“This is made worse by the fact that the more children interact with anti-vaccine content, the more anti-vaccine content will be shown to them. If self-regulation doesn’t work for social media platforms, then regulation, like the Online Safety Bill, must be the way forward to keep young people safe online.
Released in May, the Online Safety Bill imposes a “duty of care” on social media companies and certain other platforms that allow users to share and post material, in order to remove “harmful content” . This can include content that is legal but still deemed harmful, such as abuse that falls short of the criminal threshold, and posts that encourage self-harm and disinformation.
Cadier added: “The difficulty in really knowing the magnitude of this problem is that TikTok has all the information and can mark its own assignments.
“They say they deleted 30,000 videos containing disinformation about Covid-19 in the first quarter of 2021, which is a good step, but how many are left? Of those they deleted, how many views did they each get? Who shared them? Where have they spread? Where do they come from? How many users primarily see misinformation when they see content related to Covid-19? “
The Financial Times reported on Friday that an investigation by digital rights charity 5Rights alleged that dozens of tech companies, including TikTok, Snapchat, Twitter and Instagram, were violating the new UK code for children, which protects children’s privacy online.
The research was submitted to the Information Commissioner’s Office as part of a complaint drafted by Beeban Kidron, the chairman of the charity and the member of the House of Lords who originally proposed the code.
The code violations alleged by 5Rights include design tips and nudges that encourage kids to share their locations or receive personalized advertisements, data-driven features that serve harmful material, including human rights disorders. ‘feeding, self-harm and suicide, and insufficient assurance of a child’s age, before allowing inappropriate actions such as video chat strangers.
TikTok uses a small notification at the bottom of the screen that says “learn more about Covid-19 vaccines” and links directly to the NHS coronavirus vaccines page.
A quarter of TikTok’s 130 million monthly active users in the United States were between 10 and 19 years of age in March 2021 and nearly half of the total number of users were under 30, reported data company Statista. . In the UK, according to Statista, those under 25 make up 24% of all users.
TikTok has started to eclipse in popularity of other well-established social media platforms, having overtaken YouTube in terms of average viewing time for Android users in the US and UK, according to analytics firm d. ‘App Annie applications. TikTok was the world’s most downloaded app in 2020, App Annie reported.
TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a China-based internet conglomerate.
A spokesperson for TikTok said: “Our community guidelines make it clear that we do not allow medical misinformation, including misinformation relating to Covid-19 vaccines. We are working diligently to take action on content and accounts that spread disinformation while promoting authoritative content on Covid-19 and directly supporting the UK vaccination effort. “
The debate over young people and their interaction with social media platforms was reignited over the past month following revelations that Instagram knew through internal research that its app was harming the mental health of some teenage girls.
Facebook called the revelations, published in the Wall Street Journal after a document leaked by whistleblower Frances Haugen, “misrepresentation” of her work. The documents include a survey result which estimated that 30% of teenage girls believed Instagram made their body dissatisfied worse.
The research into vaccination misinformation on TikTok comes after parents and teachers’ unions expressed concerns that the rollout of the jab to children in England was “random” and “incredibly slow.” Only 9% of 12 to 15 year olds had been vaccinated last Sunday, while new data released on Friday showed that one in 14 had Covid last week.
All UK children aged 12 to 15 are eligible for a Covid vaccine following a decision by UK chief medical officers. Healthy children aged 12 to 15 are offered a Covid vaccine at this time, but those who are vulnerable to the virus, or living with someone who is, will be offered two doses eight weeks apart .
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