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 (meaning 13-17 years olds, as anyone younger can’t make 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 turn on 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 said “98 percent of the teens kept the meditation experience switched on.” That doesn’t mean these users necessarily participated in the meditation. It’s a rarely asked question, exactly what teens want to boost their mental health.
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The feature comes as TikTok scrambles to address the impact of its app on teen mental health and “encourage young people to switch off at night.” TikTok has been under pressure to actually prioritise teen safety and health, especially amid an ongoing lawsuit alleging the platform chose profit over protecting young users by falsely advertising its “addictive algorithm”. TikTok launched parental monitoring tools and app limits for teens in March 2025, enabling parents more control over screen time and the ability to see followers on children’s accounts.
A 2024 survey of U.S. teens ages 13 to 17 by the Pew Research centre found “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 found nearly half of U.S. teens are “almost constantly” online, with TikTok used by about six in 10 teens.
It’s not just teens, either. A 2022 study by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine found “80 percent of Americans said they have lost sleep because they stayed up ‘past their bedtime’ to view or participate in social media.” But this rises to 93 percent for Gen Z Americans.
Alongside Thursday’s announcement, TikTok also said 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 actually holds a wealth of mindfulness experts, including those who point to meditation.
Topics
TikTok
Family & Parenting
