TikTok. File image
| Picture Credit score: Reuters
The European Union accused TikTok on Friday (February 6, 2026) of breaching the bloc’s digital guidelines with “addictive design” options, together with autoplay and infinite scroll, in preliminary expenses that strike on the coronary heart of the favored video-sharing app’s working mannequin.
EU regulators mentioned their investigation discovered that TikTok hasn’t performed sufficient to evaluate how its options may hurt the bodily and psychological well being of customers, together with youngsters and “weak adults.”
The European Fee mentioned it believes TikTok ought to change the “primary design” of its service. The fee is the EU’s govt arm and enforcer of the 27-nation bloc’s Digital Companies Act, a sweeping rulebook that requires social media firms to scrub up their platforms and defend customers, below risk of hefty fines.
TikTok denied the accusations.
“The Fee’s preliminary findings current a categorically false and completely meritless depiction of our platform, and we’ll take no matter steps are essential to problem these findings by each means out there to us,” the corporate mentioned in an announcement.
TikTok now has an opportunity to answer to the fee’s findings, which may result in a so-called non-compliance determination and potential wonderful price as much as 6% of the corporate’s complete annual income.
“Social media dependancy can have detrimental results on the creating minds of youngsters and youths,” Henna Virkkunen, the fee’s govt vice-president for tech sovereignty, safety and democracy, mentioned in a press assertion. “The Digital Companies Act makes platforms liable for the results they’ll have on their customers. In Europe, we implement our laws to guard our kids and our residents on-line.”
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The preliminary findings from Brussels are the newest instance of strain that TikTok and different social media platforms are going through over youth dependancy.
Australia has banned social media for under-16s whereas governments in Spain, France, and Denmark need to introduce comparable measures. Within the US, TikTok final month settled a landmark social media dependancy lawsuit whereas two different firms named within the swimsuit — Meta’s Instagram and Google’s YouTube — nonetheless face claims that their platforms intentionally addict and hurt youngsters.
The fee mentioned that TikTok fuels the urge to maintain scrolling as a result of it continually rewards customers with new content material, resulting in lowered self management.
It mentioned TikTok ignores indicators that somebody is compulsively utilizing the app, such because the period of time that minors spend on it at evening, and the way typically the app is opened.
The corporate has didn’t put in place “affordable, proportionate and efficient” measures to offset the dangers, it mentioned.
The fee mentioned TikTok’s current time administration controls are simple to dismiss and “introduce restricted friction,” whereas parental instruments want “extra time and abilities” from mother and father.
Adjustments that the fee desires TikTok to make embrace disabling options like infinite scroll; placing in more practical breaks for display screen time, together with at evening; and altering its “extremely personalised” recommender system, which feeds customers an countless stream of video shorts primarily based on their preferences.
TikTok says it has quite a few instruments, comparable to customized display screen deadlines and sleep reminders, that allow customers make “intentional choices” about how they spend their time on the app.
Revealed – February 06, 2026 05:19 pm IST