TikTok has issued new guidance explaining the best way to report any abuse that teachers or leaders are subjected to on its platform.

New guidance: a message from TikTok

We are aware that students have been using TikTok to create false accounts and post inappropriate content that seeks to cause harm to schools and teachers. We deeply regret the distress that this content has caused to teachers, and we are committed and focused on resolving the issue. We are crystal clear that hateful behaviour, bullying and harassment have no place on TikTok and we are working hard to take down this content both reactively when it is reported to us as well as proactively.

We are grateful to the Association of School and College Leaders and NAHT, who met us yesterday to explore how we can tackle this issue and ensure that we can keep this content off TikTok.

We heard from the meeting that there was some confusion about how to report content, so we wanted to set out the best way for teachers to report content to us. TikTok works with the Professional Online Safety Helpline (POSH, 0344 381 4772 or helpline@saferinternet.org.uk), which is a free and independent helpline for teachers and others working with children in the UK. If you are aware of content that you do not think should be on TikTok, then your best route is to call or email the POSH helpline. The POSH helpline team will then report the content directly to our team working on this issue, who can then take action.

The UK Safer Internet Centre, which runs the helpline, is part of our dedicated Community Partner Channel. This channel handles escalations on behalf of the education community directly to our Trust and Safety team, so contacting POSH is the shortest route to getting content taken down. We have been working directly with them over the last several days. We have taken down hundreds of pieces of content they have reported to us. 

We can understand why this issue is causing distress. We don't want this content on TikTok, and we want you to know that we're working hard to keep it off our platform. If you want to report content, please call the POSH helpline 0344 381 4772 or email helpline@saferinternet.org.uk, and we can get our teams to investigate the content very quickly.

NAHT will continue to monitor this situation extremely carefully and will be quick to challenge TikTok if there is evidence that they not acting quickly enough to remove inappropriate content.