Phrases like “put your arms up” or “touch the ceiling” are often directed at girls in crop tops so viewers can see their breasts and stomachs. Commenters say “outfit check” to get a complete look at a girl’s body “pedicure check” to see their feet “there’s a spider on your wall” to get girls to turn around and show their rears and “play rock-paper-scissors” to encourage girls to flirt-fight or wrestle with each other. Some of the demands are explicit - like asking girls to kiss each other, spread their legs or flash the camera - and some harder to detect, masked with euphemisms. The transactions are happening in a public online forum open to viewers almost anywhere on the planet. But that's exactly what TikTok is doing here.” Imagine a local joint putting a bunch of minors on a stage before a live adult audience that is actively giving them money to perform whatever G, PG or PG-13 activities they request, she said. It’s “the digital equivalent of going down the street to a strip club filled with 15-year-olds,” says Leah Plunkett, an assistant dean at Harvard Law School and faculty associate at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, focused on youth and media. These exchanges did not take place between adults at a nightclub they took place on TikTok Live, where MJ, who said she was 14 years old, was broadcasting with friends to 2,000 strangers on a recent Saturday night.Ī Forbes review of hundreds of recent TikTok livestreams reveals how viewers regularly use the comments to urge young girls to perform acts that appear to toe the line of child pornography - rewarding those who oblige with TikTok gifts, which can be redeemed for money, or off-platform payments to Venmo, PayPal or Cash App accounts that users list in their TikTok profiles. “I’m 68 and you owe me one,” one attendee told her as more requests piled on.

Teenager models