TikTok to Pause Teen Content for Meditation Starting at 10 PM

Here’s the revised content without promotional call-to-actions:

If you’re a TikTok user under 18 and scrolling after 10pm, the app will interrupt your feed with a meditation exercise. Announced in a blog post on Thursday, the social media company’s "Meditation in Sleep Hours" feature will be available to all users but turned on by default for anyone under 18 (specifically 13-17 years old, as anyone younger can’t create an account). "If a teen decides to use TikTok after 10pm, their For You feed will be interrupted by a guided meditation exercise, helping them wind down for the night," TikTok’s announcement reads. "If a teen decides to spend additional time on TikTok after the first reminder, we show a second, harder to dismiss, full-screen prompt."

If you’re over 18, you can enable Sleep Hours in TikTok’s settings under "Screen Time." Whether teens will actually engage with the meditations remains to be seen. In the feature’s testing phase, TikTok indicated that "98 percent of the teens kept the meditation experience switched on." However, this does not imply that these users actively participated in the meditation. It’s a rarely asked question regarding what teens want to enhance their mental health.

This feature comes as TikTok addresses the impact of its app on teen mental health and seeks to encourage young people to switch off at night. The platform has been under pressure to prioritize teen safety and health, especially amid ongoing concerns regarding its "addictive algorithm." TikTok launched parental monitoring tools and app limits for teens in March 2025, enabling parents to have more control over screen time and view followers on children’s accounts.

A 2024 survey of U.S. teens ages 13 to 17 by the Pew Research Center found that "four in 10 or more teens say social media platforms hurt the amount of sleep they get (45 percent), as well as their productivity (40 percent)." Another 2024 Pew study indicated that nearly half of U.S. teens are “almost constantly” online, with TikTok being used by about six in 10 teens.

It’s not just teens, either. A 2022 study by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine found that "80 percent of Americans said they have lost sleep because they stayed up ‘past their bedtime’ to view or participate in social media," rising to 93 percent for Gen Z Americans. Alongside Thursday’s announcement, TikTok also stated it was donating $2.3 million of its Mental Health Education Fund in ad credits to 31 mental health organizations, including the Crisis Text Line, Alliance for Eating Disorders, and Active Minds. Ironically, TikTok itself holds a wealth of mindfulness experts, many of whom advocate for meditation.

Topics

• TikTok
• Family & Parenting