At a TikTok Table Talk with the social media app’s local executives, I got the perfect chance to ask about brainrot content on the platform, and whether it’s getting in the way of children’s creativity in their most formative years. I described in detail how repetitive it was, like a looped version of children’s shows but with more sardonic humor and none of the lessons.
It was a family talk, and the first thing they asked was how old. I said six.
‘See, that’s the point. They’re not even allowed to be there at six. How are their parents allowing them?’
TikTok’s own rules say you have to be at least 13 to have an account, and the platform bans any account it finds belongs to someone younger.
And it’s on an iPad, mind you.
The talk of family security on social media platforms has been debatable for a while. Short-form video gets blamed for a culture of short attention spans, and the security around it is as open as a GTA V map that kids are left to roam.
Congress is having the same argument right now. In September, a House panel proposed and ratified a full social media ban for children below 13, with scrolling short videos and joining chat groups off-limits for teens 13 to 17. The Senate’s version, Senate Bill No. 2424, sets the minimum age at 16.
But TikTok isn’t the problem, and it’s been doing more on safety than people tend to give it credit for.
And they came to the table with receipts.
AI on your feed
Most of the briefing was about AI, which makes sense if you’ve seen what passes for brainrot lately. If your kid knows who Tung Tung Tung Sahur is, they’ve already watched plenty of AI.
There’s now an AI Literacy Hub inside the app, in Filipino, that teaches you how to spot AI-generated content. It’s worth showing to the people who’d get the most out of it, like the kids at home or the relatives forwarding fake videos in the family group chat. All it takes is typing ‘AI’ into the search bar.
There’s also the spam problem where AI makes it cheap to churn out videos that bury actual creators. TikTok says it removed more than 86 million fake accounts globally in the first three months of 2026, and it’s testing better ways to catch accounts that exist only to post AI spam, especially around politics and current events, financial advice, and medical content.
Eighty-six million in three months is a huge number, and it means a lot of the cleanup happens before most of us ever see anything. The watch list makes sense too, since politics and health are where fake content does the most damage. Given that my question was about kids, I’d love to see content made for them on that list someday.
How to filter AI in TikTok’s settings
More than 3 billion videos on the platform now carry an AI-generated label. Those labels come from Content Credentials, invisible watermarks, and creators tagging their own posts.
The one I think parents will like most is a new AI-Generated Content setting under Manage Topics. It lets you turn down how much AI content shows up in your feed. The videos stay on the app. You just see fewer of them. You’ll find it under Settings and privacy ? Content Preferences ? Manage Topics ? AI-Generated Content.
This is the one I’d tell other parents about, since it’s a few taps deep and easy to miss. It also gets better as more videos get labeled, which is where those 3 billion labels come in.
The numbers
From January to March 2026, TikTok took down more than 3.5 million videos in the Philippines for breaking its Community Guidelines. That’s roughly 39,000 a day. It says 99.5% were removed proactively and 94% within 24 hours.
The 99.5% is the number that stuck with me, because it means almost none of this depended on someone reporting it first. It also cleared something up about my own question. Brainrot doesn’t break any rules, so it was never going to show up in a removal report. That part comes down to what we let kids watch, which is where TikTok’s family tools come in.
Requests from the government are a much smaller pile. From July to December 2025, Philippine authorities sent 111 removal requests covering 11,635 pieces of content. TikTok acted on 6,723 for breaking its guidelines and 263 for breaking local law, a 60% removal rate, and left the other 4,649 up. Of the 25 accounts flagged, it took action on five, all under local law.
Not every request ends in a takedown, and that’s by design. TikTok checks each one against its Community Guidelines, its Terms of Service and local law, which is the kind of review you’d want before anything gets pulled. Lawmakers want platforms on firmer local footing too. Pasig Rep. Roman Romulo, who led the group that drafted the House version, wants every platform to register a Philippine presence. If that passes, the next transparency report should be an interesting read.
Law enforcement asked for user information 15 times in the same period. TikTok disclosed nothing on the three legal requests. It shared some data on 45.5% of the 11 emergency requests, which it only grants when it believes there’s an imminent risk of death or serious injury.
For families
The family part of the briefing was the #ThinkTwice Family Guide, which TikTok launched in the Philippines in August 2026 with Child Rights Coalition-Asia, Child Rights Network and Plan International Pilipinas. It has conversation starters and safety tips, plus a rundown of TikTok’s own tools. The printed copy we got opens by telling you to grab a pen and your family to get started. Search ‘Think Twice’ in the app to reach the #ThinkTwice Digital Check-In Hub, where you can download the whole thing.
The guide is meant to work alongside the 50 safety and privacy features TikTok presets for teen accounts, and Family Pairing, which links a parent’s account to their teen’s.
The 50 presets are on by default and a teen doesn’t have to go looking for them. For everything else, it helps to know where to look: search ‘Think Twice’ for the guide, search ‘AI’ for the hub, and set up Family Pairing from the parent’s side.
Every one of those tools is built for a teenager with an account of their own, which is exactly why the age limit matters. A six-year-old on a parent’s iPad is watching on an adult account, with none of those protections switched on.
In schools
TikTok also recently wrapped up the Mindanao leg of TikTok Galing in Cagayan de Oro, run with the Department of Education and the UP College of Journalism. Media and digital literacy experts and advocates Dr. Rachel Khan, Professor Yvonne Chua, Kara David, and Janvic Mateo took part. So far, more than 300 DepEd teachers across Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao have gone through the training, and TikTok plans to bring in more partners in 2027.
Three hundred teachers is a solid start, especially since each one goes back to a full classroom. With more partners coming in 2027, I’m hoping it reaches a lot more schools.
It has also held youth consultations with Plan International and Child Rights Coalition Asia, asking teens how they use these platforms, what they get out of them, what risks they run into and, what they think online safety should look like. Creators like Teacher Lyka have joined some of those conversations.