The children’s advocate’s decision to clamp down on the use of children in age-inappropriate content on popular social media apps like TikTok is being supported by experts in cybercrime, child protection, and information technology.

The Jamaica Observer‘s lead story on Thursday reported Children’s Advocate Diahann Gordon Harrison as saying that her office has seen an increase in the number of videos and will be taking steps to first identify the children and then conduct social enquiries into their home situation to determine what is fuelling the increase in age-inappropriate content, and when there is need for criminal prosecution.

“I believe there has been a proliferation of these videos in recent times. But, I believe that, first of all, we need to identify where these children are,” Gordon Harrison told a meeting of more than 1,00 viewers following Wednesday’s lunchtime series, ‘Human Trafficking of Children’.

She was responding to a question from a guest who wanted to know how parents can deal with TikTok’s videos featuring “toddlers demonstrating intimacy such as passionate kissing”.

“It is very critical, because what it tells us is that, perhaps, there is a superficial issue at home,” she said, then asked, “Where are these children seeing these things, firstly, and secondly, why are they recording themselves, and thirdly, what are the interventions that are taking place within the space at home?”

Expressing support for the TikTok crackdown at a Safer Internet Week think tank hosted by telecoms giant Flow on Thursday, Kisha Shaw Riley, who is the clinical psychologist at Child Protection and Family Services Agency for the Western Region, said “It is a start.”

“An investigation has to be conducted to see what is happening within the social network and the safety system of the child so that we can make an adequate determination for next steps in terms of securing the child’s safety and well-being. The agency’s mandate is not to rip children from families but to see how best we can help the family and the child in the situations they are facing and for them to cope and to thrive,” said Shaw Riley.

She pointed out that some responses might be different for the application of cases, so all factors of the situation must be considered.

Commenting on the use of TikTok, Flow Jamaica Country Manager Stephen Price said, “It is an adult platform. In fact, the language, music, and other things are there, and if you are going to let your children in that space, it should be supervised by you. YouTube is another rabbit hole; people use it for all kinds of content and the fact is, there is a kids YouTube app… to control the content for kids.”

“It’s about educating yourselves about parental controls that you can put in place in order to support the development of your child so that, if you are not in the space with them when using the devices, you know exactly what is happening. It is far too important — the mind of a child — for us to leave to chance,” Price added.

At the same time, head of the Jamaica Cyber Incident Response Team (Ja-CIRT) Lieutenant Colonel Godphey Sterling said there needs to be more concern for the age of children who use social media platforms, as much as there is a push to promote content for generating revenue.

“We can try to manage 1,000 children in a school environment, for example, and it proves very difficult, much more difficult than trying to manage one child in a household, and so the whole matter of parenting comes back. But is there room at this point where we can start to engage platform owners and operators with respect to their services?”

TikTok developed a bad reputation for hosting dangerous viral “challenges” on its app, which are said to, at their worst, lead to serious injury or death.

Its online opponents have stressed that, beneath the surface, the app also hosts videos promoting anorexia, bullying, suicide, and sexual exploitation of minors, which all feature minors and are watched by them.

Internet information on TikTok states that among social, communication, photo, video, and entertainment apps, it is ranked as the most-downloaded worldwide since 2020. It also competes with YouTube for the top spot in consumer spending since 2020.