Can TikTok reverse its reputation among parents of school-age children? With some help from the National PTA, TikTok is facilitating conversations between teens and parents as part of a program called Create With Kindness.
TikTok and the National PTA will work together to empower local Parent Teacher Student Associations (PTSAs) with funding, interactive prompts, and other resources. An award pool of $300,000 will be allocated among PTSAs that implement the Create with Kindness program and use it to spark discussions about topics like digital safety, civil discourse, and positive interactions.
The Creative with Kindness itinerary will go national at five “marquee events” that will give TikTok and National PTA reps opportunities to comment on the material covered in the program. “Listening to the experiences of teens and parents is a critical step in building a safe platform for families, and our work with National PTA allows us to do exactly that,” said TikTok USDS Head of Trust and Safety Suzy Loftus in a statement. “By supporting the Create with Kindness program, teens and parents will take away tangible tips for creating safe digital boundaries, learn more about TikTok’s safety features like Family Pairing, and create a solid foundation for parents and teens to keep talking about how to stay safe online.”
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The safety features Loftus mentions will also be covered in the updated TikTok Guide for Parents, which will outline protections that guardians can enable on their kids’ TikTok accounts. The app has been compelled to add more controls for parents after being subjected to a probe from a group of U.S. attorneys general.
There have been numerous federal actions meant to curb TikTok’s effect on the current youth mental health crisis, and Congressional officials have scolded the app’s officials for perceived inaction on that front. TikTok’s efforts to make its platform healthier and more valuable for students have included its category-specific STEM feed and sliders that adjust the frequency of certain types of topics on the For You Page.
On the surface, the Create with Kindness program is another addition to that toolkit, but the National PTA collab also doubles as a piece of positive press for TikTok. With support for the U.S. “divest-or-ban” law fading and president-elect Donald Trump promising a more permissive stance on the app, TikTok has a chance to show that it’s not the boogeyman the government has made it out to be.
Of course, if Create with Kindness doesn’t end up moving the needle on TikTok’s public perception, the app could always go the other direction and embrace the educational potential of Gen Alpha brainrot memes. That approach might not pass muster with the PTA, but the kids would surely love it.
