- For the first time in the region, including Korea, TikTok introduces a dedicated STEM education feed alongside new digital learning opportunities for teens.
- At the 2025 Asia-Pacific Online Safety Summit in Seoul, TikTok unveiled new mental health and rest management tools, reinforcing its commitment to user well-being.
- NGOs from Thailand, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, and Korea highlighted joint initiatives with TikTok ranging from AI literacy and hotline systems to co-designed policies enhancing teen online safety.
TikTok has announced that it will roll out in the Asia-Pacific region including South Korea a dedicated feed focused on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education, alongside the introduction of enhanced well-being features designed to support mental health and digital rest.
The announcement was made at the '2025 Asia-Pacific Online Safety Summit' held at COEX in Seoul on 12 November, where Valiant Richey, Head of Global Partnerships for TikTok’s Trust & Safety Team, said the company would gradually apply new tools aimed at promoting healthy usage and will extend the educational feed to the region.
Richey emphasised that no single platform can guarantee online safety for teens in isolation, and that real change depends on collaboration with experts, NGOs, parents and governments together. Among the measures now in place: accounts of users under age 16 are set to private by default, and a daily usage cap of 60 minutes is automatically applied via the 'Family Pairing' feature, which lets parents link to their teen’s account and access more than 20 customisable settings. He described the Summit as 'a venue for multi-stakeholder cooperation for youth online safety', and stressed that TikTok’s safety policy is not simply a technical fix but reflects social solidarity.
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On the mental well-being front, TikTok is introducing features such as guided mediation and digital rest prompts: for instance, if a teen uses the app past a certain hour, the feed will be interrupted by a full-screen prompt encouraging a break. The company also flagged that the STEM feed will curate educational content from credible sources and is part of a broader push to expand digital learning opportunities for teens through short-form video.
These developments come in parallel with the company’s existing family controls and content moderation tools, which in the Asia‐Pacific region see the platform partnering with local NGOs such as The Blue Tree Foundation and regional mental-health bodies to co-design policy and support mechanisms.
One NGO representative at the Summit noted that the collaboration has moved beyond 'simple consultation to co-designing policy' and pointed out that rapid support systems such as hotline links and direct removal of harmful content are now integrated into the platform’s youth-safety infrastructure. With this latest announcement, TikTok is signalling a dual agenda for the region: enabling digital learning through the STEM feed while reinforcing protections and rest-support for younger users.
