Ofcom has launched a formal investigation into TikTok over concerns that the platform may be failing in its statutory duty to safeguard children from harmful content under Section 12 of the Online Safety Act 2023 Engadget. The regulator stressed that no conclusions have been reached.

Section 12 requires platforms likely to be accessed by children to mitigate and manage risks of harm to children online and prevent them from encountering harmful content. The investigation page is published on Ofcom's website Ofcom.

A central concern is TikTok's age assurance methodology. Ofcom published a separate report questioning the effectiveness of TikTok's age inference approach, which estimates a user's age based on platform engagement signals rather than formal documentation Engadget. The regulator has stated it has "already ruled out" age inference as a highly effective system for porn sites and other services that should not be hosting children. Extending that judgment to a general-purpose platform like TikTok, whose entire engagement model depends on algorithmic feeds, carries distinct implications.

TikTok updated its age verification rules at the beginning of 2026, reinforcing its commitment to keeping children under 13 off the platform Engadget. Under the current process, users must enter their birthdate at registration; those who fail to meet the minimum age requirement are suspended from immediately retrying with a different age. TikTok says it carries out multiple checks including an age inference model, profile information review, and published video review, with suspect accounts escalated to a human moderator.

A TikTok spokesperson told Engadget that the company has invested billions in platform safety in the eight years since TikTok launched in the UK and is confident it meets its Online Safety Act obligations.

The investigation does not arrive in a vacuum. In May 2026, Ofcom published research finding that 73% of 11- to 17-year-olds in the UK were exposed to harmful content over a four-week period, primarily through personalised feeds Reuters. Shortly after, Ofcom criticised TikTok and YouTube in a report stating their content feeds are "not safe enough" for children BBC. In the same period, Ofcom pressured Meta, Snap, and Roblox, which committed to tougher anti-grooming measures in the UK. TikTok and YouTube did not commit to significant changes at that time Engadget.

Ofcom has a documented history of regulatory friction with TikTok on child safety matters. In July 2024, the regulator fined TikTok £1.875 million for failing to accurately respond to a formal request for information about its parental controls safety feature Ofcom. In December 2023, Ofcom published a report examining how video-sharing platforms TikTok, Snap, and Twitch protect children from accessing potentially harmful videos Ofcom.

The stakes under the Online Safety Act are substantial. Compliance failures are punishable with fines of up to £18 million (around $24 million) or 10% of qualifying worldwide revenue, whichever is greater. In more serious cases, a court order can be issued requiring third parties such as advertisers to disrupt the business of the provider Engadget.

The broader context here is that Ofcom's scrutiny of age inference strikes at a tension the industry has not resolved. Engagement-based age estimation is cheap, frictionless, and scales across hundreds of millions of users, but it is fundamentally a probabilistic guess. The regulator's own research on harmful content exposure, combined with its earlier dismissal of age inference for adult-content platforms, suggests Ofcom may be building toward a position where algorithmic age estimation alone is insufficient for any service with child-protection duties. For platforms whose recommendation systems are the primary vector of harm exposure, the age-assurance question and the content-moderation question are inseparable.

What remains uncertain is whether Ofcom will settle for process improvements or push for structural changes to how TikTok's recommendation feeds operate for younger users. The investigation is at an early stage, and Ofcom has been careful not to telegraph its conclusions. But the financial penalties available under the Act, and the escalatory option of court orders targeting advertiser relationships, give the regulator leverage that goes well beyond the fines levied to date.