In conjunction with Father’s Day, TikTok, the leading destination for short-form mobile videos, is building on its global #CreateKindness movement to shed light on the important roles fathers play in shaping their children’s civic growth and create a culture of online positivity.
#CreateKindness is TikTok’s ongoing commitment to promote a culture of kindness and safety driving home the message that there is a real human being behind every account. The campaign was launched with a creative video series aimed at raising awareness around online bullying and paired with a hashtag challenge and stickers that celebrate kindness, some of which have garnered over 400 billion views across 50 billion video creations globally.
TikTok believes that kindness can be cultivated from many aspects, one of which is a child’s upbringing and environment. To kickstart dialogues around digital parenting and online safety, TikTok hosted a panel discussion to raise awareness on how to ignite and instill kindness from home and highlight the need to form support systems for young fathers to be better equipped on navigating online safety.
Moderated by well-known father and personality Nazrudin Rahman, the panel featured Joshua Hong from parental non-profit organisation Better Dads Malaysia, TikTok creator @BAPAydence and Darren Quek, Strategy Operations Manager, TikTok Malaysia, who shared their experiences on exploring digital safety with children.
“Parenting in the digital age can be daunting, especially as the pandemic has increased our reliance on digital means for all forms of social bonding and creative expression. As more people use TikTok as a platform to be entertained and express their creativity, we recognise the need to foster a culture of kindness and positive online behaviour to create a welcoming and inclusive environment; and it is ever more important to start at a young age. This is why we’re reaching out to parents to guide them in navigating social media and help them build digital resilience for their children,” said Darren Quek, Strategy Operations Manager, TikTok Malaysia.
Better Dads Malaysia is one of the pioneers in mobilising a support network around fathers through a national movement that aims to motivate and equip fathers and father figures with the resources, programs and skills needed to parent responsibly.
Joshua Hong said, “Fathers are one of the moral pillars of their families and share the responsibility in raising civic-conscious digital citizens, but we realised that there is little support for fathers out there, especially young first-time fathers. With parents spending more time at home now, this provides the perfect opportunity for them to connect with their children and we need to give equal recognition to fathers as joint-torchbearers in being good role models to their children. We at Better Dads have seen great success in the community coming together to share tips and advice, and we believe a greater conversation needs to be held to inspire more fathers to step up into responsible fatherhood.”
TikTok creator @bapaydence also added on with his personal experience on dealing with online safety and how he plans to instil safety awareness for his two-year old son. Bapydence started TikTok because he wanted to preserve his memories of his family bonding time as fun stories and is firm on educating his son on how to be safe online.
“In this digital age, it is inevitable that children will be exposed to social media. I believe we as parents have to embrace this reality and guide our children on how to be digitally resilient, rather than letting them figure it out on their own. Especially as parent content creators, we have a responsibility to ensure that our children are equipped with the right skills to thrive in the evolving online space, and know that they have a right to curate a positive presence on social media”.
Fostering a more welcoming online space
TikTok is committed to promoting safety and well-being on its platform and has championed comprehensive approaches to online safety. The various safety features such as comments filtering and blocking empowers users with additional safeguards to create a welcoming experience.
TikTok also offers resources for families who want to learn more about online safety on its Safety Centre, including its Youth Portal and Parents page that guides users on all ages on how to navigate TikTok safely.
TikTok’s Family Pairing feature allows a parent to link their account to their children’s account and enable “Restricted Mode” to moderate the content their child sees. Parents will also be able to set screen-time limits for how much time their children spend on TikTok a day as well as control restrictions around direct messaging.
Stay tuned to @TikTok_Malaysia to catch the full dialogue on how fathers can raise kind and responsible digital citizens as well as how we can all #CreateKindness from home.
Learn more about TikTok’s safety resources on the Safety Centre or download the app via the Apple Store, Google Play Store and Huawei AppGallery to #CreateKindness.
