Amnesty International has called for binding rules to stop social media feeds from repeatedly showing children harmful videos.
The call follows a preliminary European Commission finding that TikTok breached the EU’s Digital Services Act by failing to adequately assess and address the risks posed by its ‘For You’ feed.
The Commission said the feed can steer users towards more videos about isolation, sadness or body image once they engage with that material.
In findings published on Friday (6th) it warned that repeated exposure could harm the mental health of children and vulnerable adults.
Lisa Dittmer, Amnesty International’s researcher on children and young people’s digital rights, said:
“The Commission’s preliminary finding that TikTok’s ‘For You’ feed puts users’ wellbeing at risk is a welcome and urgently needed step in the fight for accountability and safer online platforms. Amnesty International’s research has repeatedly documented how TikTok draws some children into rabbit holes of depressive and suicidal ideation content.
Young people and bereaved parents shared with us how TikTok’s feed normalized and exacerbated teenagers’ struggles with depression and self-harm.
This should never have been allowed to happen.
“The European Commission’s decision echoes our conclusion that TikTok had failed to adequately assess and mitigate these risks.
TikTok must now finally comply with European regulation and ensure that its platform is safe for children and adults alike.
It is time to fundamentally change social media: an industry whose major players’ business models are all too often purpose-built on the exploitation of people’s attention and vulnerabilities.
Regulators must now go further through additional regulations to reverse the burden of proof and create binding standards for platform design to put an end to addictive and toxic feeds.”
In its 2025 report Dragged into the Rabbit Hole, Amnesty examined what happened when children and young people in France interacted with mental health content on TikTok.
It found that the platform went on to recommend a succession of videos about depression, self-harm and suicide.
The research led to a formal complaint under the Digital Services Act.
Two earlier Amnesty reports, published in 2023, raised concerns about children’s rights to health, privacy and freedom of thought.
The organisation linked those concerns to how TikTok recommends videos and to the business model behind the platform.
The Commission has proposed making it easier for users to control what appears in their feed.
It questioned whether tapping ‘Not interested’ does enough to change subsequent recommendations and said the system should give more weight to what users explicitly say they want to see.
The investigation is ongoing.