Snapchat is kicking dozens of children in Britain off its platform each month compared with tens of thousands blocked by rival TikTok, according to internal data the companies shared with Britain’s media regulator Ofcom and which Reuters has seen.
According to the data seen by Reuters, TikTok told Ofcom that between April 2021 and April 2022, it had blocked an average of around 180,000 suspected underage accounts in Britain every month, or around 2 million in that 12-month period. “We take these obligations seriously and every month in the U.K. we block and delete tens of thousands of attempts from underage users to create a Snapchat account,” the Snap spokesperson said.
Snapchat does block users from signing up with a date of birth that puts them under the age of 13. Reuters could not determine what protocols are in place to remove underage users once they have accessed the platform and the spokesperson did not spell these out. Companies that fail to uphold their terms of service face being fined up to 10% of their annual turnover.
Snapchat “must take much stronger action to ensure that young children are not using the platform, and older children are being kept safe from harm,” he said.