TikTok

TikTok

TikTok

Daily screen time
Helping people be more mindful of their daily screen time

Daily screen time
Helping people be more mindful of their daily screen time

Problem

Users

  • Internal studies showed that people weren’t aware of how much time they spent on TikTok

  • Some people spent more time on TikTok than they wanted, which interfered with important areas of life such as work, school, family, and sleep


Research

  • People who spent 6+ hours per day on screens had a higher risk for depression (National Library of Medicine)

  • Children who spent 2+ hours per day on screens scored lower on thinking and language tests (National Institute of Health)

  • Children who spent 7+ hours on screens had thinning of the brain’s cortex, which is related to critical thinking and reasoning (National Institute of Health)

Opportunity

Empower people to manage their screen time effectively

  • Help people be more mindful and in control of their time spent on TikTok (to increase their agency)

  • Help users who don’t spend an extreme amount of time on TikTok but signal that they need support in managing their screen time

Strategy

Developed subject matter expertise

  • Attended a conference on problematic interactive media use, led by Boston Children’s Hospital, which helped me shape the direction of this feature and influence screen time product strategy

    • Proactively identified a takeaway to my screen time work: “Avoid language that evokes screen time limits. We hear a lot about screen time limits, by no one wants to be limited. Instead, it’s about valuable media usage vs. invaluable usage.”


Drove messaging strategy

  • Succeeded in convincing the product team, and communications and policy stakeholders, that removing the term “limit” from our UI language would be worthwhile

  • My recommendation also connected well with our broader goals for screen time: help people have more control and agency over their screen time behavior, without glaring restraints

Outcome

Increased "Daily screen time" DAU for all

  • 6.4x increase in daily active users, driving user awareness and trust

  • 1,900+ social media mentions, 3,800+ social media engagements, and 100+ million people reached across the globe


Increased "Daily screen time" adoption rate for minors

  • 55% increase in the adoption rate for users under 18

  • 50% increase in our under-18 safety tool adoption rate; 99.7% of this was driven by the screen time default for minors, a feature that had high significance to the company to become a trusted brand


Overall increases across “Screen time”

  • 75% increase in daily active users

  • 154% increase in daily active users for people under 18

  • Scaled screen time from 1 lightweight feature to an industry-leading suite of well-being tools, exceeding targets for awareness:

    • 68 million page views

    • 100+ million PR impressions

    • 19.2 million daily active users (up from 1.5 million)


High-impact articles

—> TikTok Sets Default Daily Screen Time Limit For Under 18s (Forbes)

—> TikTok expanding time limits on app (Axios)

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Feature

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Toast and tooltip

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Intervention

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Intervention