A new study from the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) suggests that TikTok is used by a majority of 11- to 12-year-olds in the US, despite the fact that they don’t meet the platform’s minimum age requirement. 

Published last week in a pediatric academic journal, the report is based on research breaking down trends in social media usage among a national sample of more than 10,000 11- to 15-year-olds, which the UCSF team split up into pre-teens (11 to 12s) and teens (13 to 15s). 

Overall, a majority (63.8%) of the younger group say they use social media, which means they’re bypassing platform requirements that users be at least 13 years old. And a small subset (6.3%) also reported having a “secret” social media account that their parents don’t know about 

TikTok, Instagram and YouTube ranked as the top three platforms by usage for both age groups. 

Three-quarters of the teens surveyed (73.5%) use Instagram, followed by YouTube (66.3%) and TikTok (66.1%). 

As for tweens, 68.2% have TikTok accounts, followed by YouTube (62.9%) and Instagram (57.3%). And nearly 39% of this age group noted that TikTok is the social media platform they use the most. 

Despite its popularity among kids, TikTok is currently facing a potential ban in the US that will start on January 19 unless the platform is sold by ByteDance, its China-based parentco.

This potential ban is primarily fueled by concerns about national security—but the UCSF study has also highlighted child welfare as an important issue for consideration. For instance, researchers found that 17% of the young people it surveyed tried to use social media less but couldn’t. And 11% reported that their schoolwork was negatively affected by their social media usage.

“Policymakers need to look at TikTok as a systemic social media issue, and create effective measures that protect children online,” says Jason Nagata, the study’s lead author and a pediatrician at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals.

The full study is available online.

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