TikTok must do more to keep children off the popular video-sharing app and obtain their consent to collect and use their data, a joint investigation by Canadian privacy watchdogs released Tuesday said.
The federal privacy commissioner and his counterparts in Quebec, British Columbia and Alberta said the more than two-year investigation found TikTok has been collecting and using personal information of hundreds of thousands of children under the age of 13 who use the app each year — despite the company stating its platform is not intended for users that young.
“We found that TikTok must do more to keep underage children off its platform,” Philippe Dufresne, the federal commissioner, said at a press conference in Ottawa.
“Despite the fact that the application uses the information that it collects, including biometric information to estimate users’ age for its own business purposes, our investigation found that the measures the TikTok had in place to keep children off the popular video sharing platform and to prevent the collection and use of their sensitive personal information for profiling and content targeting purposes were inadequate.”
Diane MacLeod, Alberta’s information and privacy commissioner, said the biometric data collected by TikTok has been used to expose children to “a wide spectrum of risks and harms,” including targeted ads that normalize gambling and “increase identity theft, hinder healthy development, foster negative body images or early sexualization, or reinforced gender stereotypes.”
“Every minute of every day, a child in Canada is removed from TikTok because they are under 13 years of age,” B.C.’s privacy commissioner Michael Harvey said. “That’s half a million accounts banned every year belonging to children who should never have been on the platform, children whose personal information has been collected and used in ways they could not have meaningfully consented to and without a reasonable or legitimate purpose.
“This flies in the face of the key principles that underpin our privacy laws.”
Dufresne said TikTok has accepting the findings and recommendations of the investigation and has agreed to enhance its age-assurance methods to keep underage users off the platform. It has also agreed to strengthen privacy communications to ensure users understand how their data may be used, make that information more accessible, and provide it in French as well as English.
“We found the investigation to be well founded and conditionally resolved,” he said. “So that means that we’re pleased with the undertakings that TikTok has taken to meet our recommendations.”
The main takeaway, he added, was that platforms like TikTok — not parents and guardians — should be responsible for users understanding a company’s data-collection policies.
Global News has reached out to TikTok for comment on the investigation.
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The findings come as an ownership deal for TikTok between the United States and China is expected to be finalized as soon as this week, after years of growing privacy and national security concerns over the Chinese-owned app that has come to dominate the media landscape.
The Canadian investigation was launched in 2023, with the four commissioners saying they intended to dig into whether TikTok’s practices comply with Canadian privacy legislation, and whether “meaningful consent is being obtained for the collection, use and disclosure of personal information.”
Calling younger users “an important proportion” of TikTok’s user base, the commissioners said the investigation would have a “particular focus” on how the company obtained and used young people’s data.
Toronto Metropolitan University’s Social Media Lab reported in May that one-third of Canadian adults have a TikTok account, but that 65 per cent of adults aged 18 to 24 and 59 per cent of those aged 25 to 34 use the app. In the U.S., nearly six in 10 adults under 30 and 63 per cent of teenagers between 13 and 17 are on TikTok, the Pew Research Center said in December.
The investigation also cited settled lawsuits in the U.S. and Canada that accused TikTok of illegally collecting children’s data.
Since the Canadian probe was announced, Ottawa has banned TikTok from government devices and launched a national security review into the company and its Chinese owner ByteDance.
That review resulted in the closure of TikTok’s Canadian business offices in late 2024, although the app remains available to Canadian users. The government has never revealed its national security findings or explained in detail why it feels the app is still safe to use, only calling it a “personal choice” to remain on the platform.
Dufresne told the House of Commons ethics committee in December that the windup of TikTok Canada would make it more difficult to compel witness testimony and documents from the company as part of his joint investigation.
The conclusion of the review came after former prime minister Justin Trudeau told Canadians to heed a warning from then-CSIS director David Vigneault, who told CBC last year that TikTok users’ data “is going to be available to the Government of China.”
Western governments have warned that ByteDance is subject to Chinese national security laws that allow the ruling Chinese Communist Party to access any company’s data as the government sees fit.
Concerns have also been raised about the possibility of Chinese authorities manipulating TikTok’s prized recommendation algorithm to shape the content users see.
TikTok had sought to move American data to a U.S.-based and controlled data centre and oversight board known as Project Texas, but U.S. lawmakers cast doubt on the efficacy of that plan so long as ByteDance still controlled the platform.
Last year, Congress passed a law that would ban the app in the U.S. unless ByteDance divested itself of TikTok and its algorithm.
The ban briefly went into effect in January after TikTok and ByteDance refused a sale and unsuccessfully fought the legislation in court, but U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly extended the deadline to make room for a deal with China.
The framework of a deal came into place last week after talks between American and Chinese officials.
The White House confirmed Monday that the framework calls for a consortium of investors, including Oracle and Silver Lake, to take over the U.S. operations of TikTok in a process that might not be completed until early next year.
Trump is expected to issue an executive order later this week that declares that the terms of the deal meet the security concerns laid out by the law. China still needs to sign off on the framework proposal, and any final deal would still require regulatory approval.
—With files from The Associated Press
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