Photo: 123RF
TikTok has expended its features aimed to help keep kids safe online.
The social media platform is releasing three new features that give parents additional tools to set boundaries for their children.
It comes as TikTok will present independent research at New Zealand Parliament on Thursday.
The research, conducted by Talbot Mills, reveals four out of five New Zealanders (81 percent) believe parents should decide when teens can start using social media.
In addition to this, the research found cyberbullying, dangerous or explicit content and meeting strangers remain the top concerns for Kiwi parents, but the survey shows six out of 10 parents regularly discuss online safety with their children.
However, only one in three Kiwi parents have social media rules in place for their children.
Common actions by parents include using family pairing tools, setting times of the day with no devices, following their child on social media and having the passcodes to their accounts.
The research comes amid mounting fears about what children are accessing online.
TikTok said its new features would help parents be better equipped to have conversations with their children about staying safe online.
The 'Time Away' feature will allow parents and guardians to schedule customisable time limits for their individual family needs, such as deciding when their child can't use the app.
Parents can also now see who their teen is following on TikTok, who follows them, and the accounts their teen has blocked.
The new Time Away feature. Photo: Supplied/TikTok
The 'Wind Down' feature on the app will interrupt the For You feed on users under 16-year-old after 10pm with a full screen take-over with "calming music".
If a teen decides to spend additional time on TikTok after the first reminder, it will show a second, harder to dismiss, full-screen prompt.
Parents can also now see who their teen is following on TikTok, who follows them, and the accounts their teen has blocked. Photo: Supplied/TikTok
TikTok's new dedicated, fact-checked STEM feed is now available to all users in New Zealand.
It makes it it easier to find educational content on TikTok.
All content on the STEM feed goes through a triple layer fact-checking process and TikTok has partnerships with independent organisations Common Sense Networks and Poynter Institute as part of this process.
More than 65 Kiwi STEM creators appear on the feed alongside over 8000 STEM creators from around the world, TikTok said.
But an online safety and parenting educator is sceptical of TikTok's motivations to present at Parliament today, which comes ahead of Australia's social media ban on under-16s later this year.
Co-founder of Make Sense, Holly Brooker, told Morning Report she believed TikTok was attempting to avoid any potential ban in New Zealand.
"It's a classic approach of these voluntary measures that get put into place to avoid government regulation and I really do think that we're at the point where we need the government to step in."
She said while it was great that parents believed they should decide when teens started using social media, in her experience, that didn't reflect reality.
"What we know is that nearly 50 percent of kids are actually using these platforms regardless of parental involvement.
"So this poses huge risks for kids whose parents aren't aware they're on these platforms - they aren't able to support them in navigating the content they might be absorbing or seeing, or the messaging they're engaging in."
Brooker said the online evironment was fast-changing and she believed parents were struggling to keep up.
"They're not fully aware of what's actually happening on these (platforms) and I really recommend parents download these apps and actually operate them as a 14-year-old, or whatever the age of their child is, so they actually have a good understanding of what their kids are experiencing on them.
"There's high trust in these safety barriers that are put into place by the platforms.
"My experience is that they're just not actually good enough for our young people and we've got a huge systemic issue in New Zealand in addressing online harm - we're really neglecting to address it."
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