Suicide, stabbing stories and sexual content shown to Irish teens joining TikTok

Meanwhile, a 14-year-old boy can also be bombarded with images of junk food, murder and a broad range of conspiracies, including ‘contacting the devil’.

This was just some of the shocking content that greeted our reporters during a Sunday World investigation.

We set up two accounts for a 14-year-old girl and 14-year-old boy and observed both for over 24 hours.

From the perspective of a teen girl, innocent content of shopping hauls, Snapchat hacks and life at school quickly descended into concerning comments about mental health and suicide.

All the app knew about our reporter was that she was joining from Dublin and was born in 2009.

Despite this, the algorithm placed videos on mental health and even school shootings between clips showing sunny beaches, dance routines and recipes.

“Motherf***ers can die at 13 but won’t get a funeral ’til their 75,” one video is captioned.

A comment on the clip says: “It means at 13 you’re dead inside and no one will care but most humans die at 75 and that’s when people start to care...”

The video has over 200k likes, while another clip discussing how much of a “disappointment” the young user is to their parents boasts over 300k likes.

“All my parents asked for was a happy child who got good grades, who was respectful. I can’t imagine how much of a disappointment it must of [sic] been to get me,” the caption reads.

Another video discusses “drinking a litre bottle of vodka every weekend” at the age of 14 and “chatting to boys way too old for me”.

Minutes later, in between videos about ‘how to get a boy to notice you’ and simple makeup tips, a clip describes being seen by their teacher “high on dr*gs”.

Words such as ‘drugs’, ‘suicide’ and ‘sexual assault’ are against the Community Guidelines of the platform. However, users have found loopholes, instead censoring certain words and using slang like ‘unalive’ to describe suicide.

Other videos shown to the would-be 14-year-old user on TikTok include discussions of the ‘disgusting’ ways teenage boys treat women.

Alarmingly, another video shares the feelings a teenage user has ‘waking up after an attempt’ on their own life.

The 14-year-old boy’s account was shown disturbing content which was interwoven with light and ‘humorous’ videos.

Our account was for a teenage boy with no previous record of using TikTok. All the app knew about our reporter was that he was joining from Dublin and was born in 2009.

To begin with, approximately 75pc of what the algorithm produced was reels about sugary food. Chocolate pancakes, Nutella rolls, jelly sweets, pizza and profiterole recipes were played on repeat.

Suddenly, an image pops up of a woman with a black eye hugging a teddy bear, beside a man on a couch. The woman looks upset as the man stares at a TV screen, the implication being she has been punched.

The reels then return to recipes for sugary cake. Next up is a video mocking Queen Elizabeth’s death with an image of a skeleton riding a horse, before a return to ingredients for Oreo cake and sour strips.

“If you laugh, you go to hell,” the caption read.

As our reporter continued to flick through normal content, ranging from football to school jokes, a video then popped out of a young girl describing how she would kill her parents.

This appeared as testimony from a documentary on VHS tape; “stab them,” the girl said.

The content again returned to normal for a sustained period. Out of the blue, conspiracy theories emerged.

An evil looking clown was shown dancing with a child. The caption read “The recorder of the video was never seen again”.

Murder victims were shown ‘before they were killed’.

There are also stories about friends dying and what emoji to react with if this were to happen, including one claiming to be an adult Madeleine McCann.

“Im not coming home” the caption read.

The ratio of disturbing content to normal content was relatively low. For every disturbing video, there may be thirty innocuous videos.

On another occasion a mock funeral video appeared with decoration ideas for coffins. “It’s my funeral, I’m dead,” one caption read.

After a period of normal content, images again turned strange. “If you’re racist and you know it clap your hands,” was one caption.

Somebody posted a clip about catching their parents having sex. A child is heard saying “I heard you and daddy in the bedroom.”

The Sunday World contacted TikTok in relation to this investigation. The company released a statement which said: “We are committed to building age-appropriate experiences where teens can safely have fun and explore their creativity.

“We take appropriate action against any content that violates our community guidelines, including banning violative hashtags and removing videos.

“We continue to invest at scale in our Trust and Safety operations to keep content with more mature themes from reaching younger audiences.”

Meanwhile, CyberSafeKids’ CEO Alex Cooney, has said children are being exposed to vast amounts of inappropriate content across many of the major platform, not just TikTok.

“The big social media platforms need to be doing much more with the vast profits they’re making, to monitor and remove this harmful content on their services, especially when it relates to a child,” he said.

​If you have been affected by this story, you can contact Samaritans on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.ie