The UK ICO says it is investigating how TikTok uses 13 to 17-year-olds' personal data for content suggestions, and how Reddit and Imgur verify child users' ages
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/ 2025... X: Ico / @iconews : The investigation into TikTok will consider how the platform uses personal information of 13-17 year olds to make recommendations to them and deliver content to their feed. [image] Ico / @iconews : The investigations into Imgur and Reddit will consider: ➡️ how the platforms use UK children's personal information ➡️ how they use age assurance measures to estimate or verify ages. Learn more: https://ico.org.uk/.... Ico / @iconews : NEW: We're investigating how TikTok, Reddit and Imgur use UK children's personal information. Read more: https://ico.org.uk/... [image] Forums: r/unitedkingdom : UK launches investigation into TikTok, Reddit over childrens personal data practices r/europe : UK launches investigation into TikTok, Reddit over children's personal data practices
Context & Ripple Effects
This inquiry follows a longer UK privacy record around young users: the ICO opened an earlier TikTok privacy inquiry in 2019 and later imposed a £12.7M TikTok fine over under-13 users' data.
By examining recommendation practices alongside age assurance, the regulator connects feed personalization to the question of whether platforms can reliably identify child users. Related coverage later shows that this scrutiny could mature into enforcement, including a £14.47M Reddit penalty over children's data.
First-order effects
- TikTok, Reddit and Imgur face ICO scrutiny of their child-data practices; TikTok's teen recommendation systems and Reddit's and Imgur's age-assurance approaches are directly in scope.
- The companies will need to substantiate how they use UK children's personal information and how their systems estimate or verify age.
Second-order effects
- Age assurance becomes an operational privacy issue rather than a standalone sign-up feature, raising the compliance stakes for platforms serving UK users.
- Platforms that personalize feeds for teenagers may need to review whether data use for recommendations can be separated from, or justified alongside, child-protection controls.
Third-order effects
- If this enforcement pattern holds, youth-safety compliance will increasingly govern both access to social platforms and the data-driven systems that shape what younger users see.
- The UK model could push platform governance toward auditable age checks and tighter limits on child-data personalization, with the eventual boundary defined through investigations and penalties rather than voluntary policies.
The trend: This is part of a shift toward regulating age verification and recommendation systems as linked controls for protecting children online.