Lila (pseudonym), a 12-year-old girl, met Jonathan on TikTok. He told her he was a high school senior, but really, he was a 33-year-old man. He charmed her with flirting and compliments. They chatted all the time and he eventually convinced her to move their conversations to text messages.
Jonathan would shower her with presents, like Amazon gift cards and a necklace for her birthday. But only in exchange for sexually explicit images.
Lila knew what he was asking for wasn’t right, but after a lot of coaxing, she relented.
It was a classic case of grooming. All because of a connection that was created through TikTok.
TikTok has landed itself on the Dirty Dozen List this year, and Lila’s story is only the tip of the iceberg as to why. While many people see little risk with this video-sharing app beyond the late-night doomscrolling, the problems with TikTok run much deeper.
Child Sexual Abuse Material Trading Networks on TikTok
For a long time, TikTok did not allow photos or videos to be shared in comments and messages. Tik Tok’s Head of Safety touted this back in 2020:
“Unlike other platforms, we don’t permit images or videos to be sent in comments or messages. This was a deliberate decision on our part: studies have shown that a proliferation of Child Sexual Abuse Material has been linked and spread via messaging. TikTok was built to provide a positive place for creativity and we prioritize the safety of our users. From the very beginning we chose not to allow users to upload photos or videos to their messages.”
Fast forward to 2025, they suddenly changed their mind. Currently, TikTok does have age restrictions for their chat features, including having it off by default for 16 and 17-year-olds (they can still turn it on) and disabling the feature for 15 and under. However, the sharing of media in chats and comment sections is exactly the high-risk feature for sexual exploitation that TikTok stated it was.
A NCOSE researcher spent time testing TikTok – as a 15-year-old user – after these new changes to media in messages and comments went into effect. In only 15 minutes, they discovered over 50 posts and comments that had high risk indications of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) trading and networking.
Despite TikTok’s community guidelines, users are able to trade CSAM using certain workarounds to communicate. Upon testing, we found that users would encourage others to “go shopping in da comments,” where they can network and trade CSAM. A common tactic used to trade CSAM on TikTok is to post with numbers like 31, 41, 51 followed by the reverse emoji 🔄, which in context indicated reversing the numbers to instead read 13, 14, 15. Some accounts even explicitly noted this numeric reversal stating “41 backwards.” Testing also revealed people propositioning others to continue trading CSAM on other platforms like Snapchat.
Even TikTok staffers admitted, “We’ve created an environment that encourages sexual content,” according to reported internal documents.
See evidence of this at EndSexualExploitation.org/TikTok.
Livestream and Virtual Currency Function as a Vehicle for Sexual Exploitation, Including Sex Trafficking
A 2025 BBC investigation documented accusations that TikTok had profited from child sexual exploitation through its livestreaming feature:
“…three women from Kenya contacted the BBC, disclosing that they had begun producing sexually explicit content in exchange for digital gifts during their teenage years. Additionally, they revealed that TikTok actively promoted and facilitated payment negotiations for more explicit material, which was then distributed and monetized across other platforms.”
The Utah Division of Consumer Protection filed a legal complaint against TikTok, accusing them of profiting from manipulative design features and its virtual currency system. They allege that these features facilitate child sexual exploitation, sex trafficking, and other illegal activities through the livestreaming feature. Below is a quote from the complaint:
“Through a feature called ‘TikTok LIVE,’ users can stream live videos of themselves and interact with viewers in real time. Combined with TikTok’s virtual currency system, this feature allows adults to prey on children in many egregious ways, including by transacting with and soliciting sexual acts from minors. Despite knowing and facilitating these dangers, the company turns a blind eye because LIVE has helped make TikTok very rich.”
TikTok functions as a Recruitment Pipeline to OnlyFans
TikTok also serves as a pipeline to OnlyFans. The algorithm appears to favor sexualized content and online pimps actively use TikTok to recruit more OnlyFans creators.
A prime example of this is the “Bop House,” started by two TikTok creators turned OnlyFans models, Sophie Rain and Aishah Sofey. Similar to a social media “hype” house, creators convert rooms into studios to create sexual content and share the colossal monthly rent payment (reportedly $75,000 for the Bop House).
Even when the environment in the Bop House became toxic and creators left, the members who stayed held an online competition for their replacements and received approximately 12,000 applications. This shows how TikTok helps funnel interested creators not just into individual OnlyFans accounts, but into structured, commercialized, exploitation ecosystems.
Collective Shout documented how a former marketer and recruiter for an OnlyFans agency, named Victoria, used TikTok to funnel young women into pornographic content creation. She explained how the agency pressured creators to make “suggestive TikToks,” even when they expressed discomfort with it, because it was “the only way to gain more subscribers… and money.”
Victoria also described a system where the content would escalate from bikini photos to “everything, no rules” and during that time the agency prioritized “young girls … who looked younger than they were” (advertised as “barely legal”), because that demographic brought in more revenue.
This pipeline is particularly concerning, especially given that TikTok is marketed as a safe app for children 12+ years old via the Apple App Store.
What Needs to Change at TikTok
NCOSE urges TikTok to make significant improvements in order to keep their platforms safe, including turning restricted mode ON by default for all minors, halting the livestream feature until the child sexual abuse material and adult sexual content currently occurring on there can be effectively prevented, removing the DM feature for minors, and increasing the age of default safety settings to 18 years old.
Read our full list of recommendations here.
Since their placement on the 2026 Dirty Dozen List, NCOSE staff have met with representatives from TikTok and they have expressed an openness to hear our concerns. We hope to soon be able to celebrate victories.
