Published March 2025
In 2023, we launched TikTok's first global Youth Council. Listening to the experiences of teens is one of the most important steps we can take to build a creative and joyous TikTok environment for them. And, by actively engaging young people and hearing their insights, we can better understand and respond to their safety and well-being needs on our platform. After a successful first year, we're now expanding our Youth Council and sharing some reflections from the first year.
The importance of including a diversity of voices
As a platform that serves communities from around the world, we prioritize ensuring that our Youth Council reflects the diversity of people on TikTok. Our first group included 15 teens ages 14–18 from around the world. In 2025, we have now nearly doubled the size of our council by bringing together 28 teens from 15 countries, including Nigeria, Cameroon, Canada, Qatar, Myanmar, Poland, Argentina, Australia, and Czechia, which we added this year. Teens from Brazil, Indonesia, Kenya, Mexico, the U.K. and, the U.S. have chosen to stay on the Council for a second year.
The importance of partnering with organizations specializing in youth safeguarding
TikTok’s Youth Council meetings are organized and facilitated by Praesidio Safeguarding, an online safety agency with expertise in research and youth participation. By partnering with organizations that specialize in fostering inclusive and empowering environments for young people, we can ensure that our members can feel comfortable sharing their perspectives in a way that translates to real impact on our platform.
Celebrating our first ever Youth Council
Our first Youth Council had a bumper year, meeting every few months as a global collective to help us understand the teen perspective on key projects, including:
- Teens asked us to restrict effects that could affect a young person's sense of self. Taking this on board, in November 2024, we announced new changes - we're blocking certain appearance effects for teens under 18 and providing more information about how an effect might change their appearance if applied. As we made the change, our Youth Council advised us on what sorts of effects to block and helped us to develop new information pages.
- Members of our Youth Council worked with us to redesign and relaunch our Teen Safety Center after telling us how we could make it a more compelling resource for teens.
- Youth Council members asked us to do more to support families where the caregivers don't use TikTok. With this in mind, we worked with our partners, FOSI in the US and Internet Matters in the UK, to launch Digital Safety Partnerships for Families. These helpful guides make it easier for families to start conversations about online experiences and set positive digital boundaries together.
Focus on being youth-led, not adult-assumed
At TikTok, we have lots of brilliant people who are leading experts in their respective fields. But one reason why we set up our Youth Council was to help us design solutions that are more effective and appropriate for the community they're meant to protect. We work with our members to set an agenda for the year ahead. This helps us to know what is important to them and it also means our product and policy teams gain a more comprehensive understanding of what young people want to solve or improve in their online experiences at large. Topics that are top of mind for the 2025 Youth Council include:
- Exploring industry-wide questions about age-assurance
- Discussing how to combat financial sextortion
- AI transparency and labelling
- How people can be incentivised for creating a positive community
Our work with the Youth Council is just one of the ways we continue to learn, adapt, and strengthen our approach to teen safety. By centering youth voices and taking action on their valuable perspectives, we aim to build a platform that truly reflects and protects the needs of the youngest members of our community.
Author: Valiant Richey, Global Head of Trust and Safety Outreach and Partnerships, TikTok
