Around half of those aged between 3 and 17 use TikTok and Snapchat, figures collected as part of the watchdog's annual survey of children's and parents' online attitudes showed.
"U.S. should respect fair competition, and stop suppressing foreign companies," Mao said, while answering a question about U.S. lawmakers pushing forward with the bill, which is designed to address national security worries relating to the popular video app.
In the United States, there are growing calls to ban TikTok, owned by China-based company ByteDance, or to pass bipartisan legislation to give President Joe Biden's administration legal authority to seek a ban. Devices owned by the U.S. government were recently banned from having the app installed.
Shou Zi Chew took over the CEO of TikTok in 2021 and oversaw its meteoric rise. In that year, the short video sharing app clocked 1 billion monthly users.
The move follows similar restrictions on TikTok in democratic countries amid fears about the popular video-sharing app’s Chinese connections.
"Following the government's decision to ban TikTok from government devices, the commissions of both the House of Commons and Lords have decided that TikTok will be blocked from all parliamentary devices and the wider parliamentary network," a parliament spokesperson said.
Adding to the perception, last week the company said the Biden administration had demanded TikTok's owners divest their stakes in the popular video app or face a possible ban.
When TikTok's Chief Executive Officer Shou Zi Chew testifies before Congress for the first time on Thursday, advertisers will be closely watching his appearance for news as well as the reaction of lawmakers, several ad agencies told Reuters.
Pressure is mounting from lawmakers and national security hawks to ban TikTok, which is owned by China's ByteDance, over fears the app could censure content, influence users, and pass Americans' personal data to Beijing, allegations the company denies.
On Thursday TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew will testify before the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee amid growing calls for a ban over national security concerns at a time when relations between Beijing and Washington have deteriorated.
Rylie Jouett from Texas shared a now-viral TikTok video about the awkward moment she realised her interviewer was the same man with whom she had cut off all contact six years ago.
Pressure is mounting from lawmakers and national security hawks to ban TikTok, which is owned by China's ByteDance, over fears the app could censure content, influence users, and pass Americans' personal data to Beijing, allegations the company denies.
"TikTok has never shared, or received a request to share, U.S. user data with the Chinese government. Nor would TikTok honor such a request if one were ever made," Chew will testify on Thursday, according to written testimony posted on Tuesday by the House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee.
The Chinese-owned app confirmed the figure ahead of TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew's testimony set for Thursday before the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
Building a profile from user data to enable targeted phishing attacks on sensitive government accounts is plausible, however, there is no evidence that social media applications like TikTok has been used for this purpose.
The UK is the latest addition to the list of countries that have banned TikTok in government offices. So far, the USA, European Union, and New Zealand have banned the popular Chinese app on official government devices due to privacy concerns. India was among the first nation to ban the app completely, citing concerns related to privacy & national sovereignty. Watch this video to find out why countries in the west have now started banning the app.
"The security of sensitive government information must come first, so today we are banning this app on government devices. The use of other data-extracting apps will be kept under review," Cabinet Office minister Oliver Dowden said in a statement.
Concerns have mounted globally about the potential for the Chinese government to access users' location and contact data through ByteDance, TikTok's Chinese parent company.
The ban brings the UK in line with the US, Canada and the European Union (EU) and also India which banned TikTok entirely from the country, even as the company strongly denies sharing user data with the Chinese government.
The company was responding to a report in The Wall Street Journal that said the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., part of the Treasury Department, was threatening a U.S. ban on the app unless its owners, Beijing-based ByteDance Ltd., divested.
G42, controlled by United Arab Emirates royal Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, acquired a $100 million-plus stake from existing investors in recent months through its 42XFund, people with knowledge of the deal said.
A divestiture, which could result in a sale or initial public offering, is considered a last resort, to be pursued only if the company’s existing proposal with national security officials doesn’t get approved, according to people familiar with the matter. Even then, the Chinese government would have to agree to such a transaction, the people said.
Eno Alaric posted his so called "predictions" in a TikTok which has received more than 26,000 views.
The information shared included names, phone numbers, insurance information, treatment details and more
Spotify says the new TikTok-like interface is built for "Deeper Discovery and Connection(s)"