Seara Adair, a mom of two young girls from the city of Atlanta, revealed in a TikTok video last year that a family member sexually abused her as a child. Her follower count grew by tens of thousands in the next few weeks after her revelation, many of whom appeared to be minors.
Adair saw this as an opportunity as she started using the popular short-form video app to educate her followers about various digital dangers. The Georgia native posted about the risks of being approached by strangers online and the inappropriate content found hidden in the deep corners of TikTok and other social media platforms.
She told CNN Business that minors started tagging her in posts or sharing things they had come across that made them scared. Adair, who has now amassed 350,000 TikTok followers, said they would say, "Hey, I came across this. What do I do? Can you do something?"
Watchdog moms flag issues on the internet
In one example, a young follower informed Adair of an alleged practice on TikTok in which adults and minors can post explicit videos privately on their accounts' "Only Me" feed. It can then be accessed by anyone on TikTok with a shared password.
A TikTok spokesperson said it moderates each video that is uploaded to the site, whether set to public or private and removes and reports any child sexual abuse material to the National Center for Missing or Exploited Children.
Adair also used TikTok in another case last month to discuss the spread of alleged grooming manuals on the dark web, which teach predators how to spot vulnerable kids, gain their trust, and then prey on them.
She is part of an emerging community of so-called watchdog moms on the internet that calls attention to potential issues for younger users on TikTok and other social media platforms. They then build up an online following in the process.
This small group of parents flags issues on the net ranging from sharing exploitative videos to more routine concerns about the oversharing of pictures and personal information about kids online. Adair and her peers work to get inappropriate content taken offline, which she admitted is often a very long battle.
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Adams makes a difference on TikTok
Sarah Adams, known as mom.uncharted on TikTok, is part of this advocate cohort. She has attracted millions of views on the social media platform for exposing these types of dangers to minors, according to Buzzfeed News.
She started by creating videos on TikTok about sharing practices and child safety. Eventually started highlighting specific examples of the inappropriate content she had found, including how seemingly sexual predators can fetishize harmless pictures shared by parents online.
According to Adams, this subset of influencers never meet in person, but they often chat to share experiences and findings and come together to attempt to take down the concerning videos they found.
