A GLOBAL PETITION calling on TikTok to “address its toxic and addictive design” will today be delivered to the social media firm’s Dublin office.

The petition has been signed by over 170,000 people and will be delivered to TikTok’s Dublin office by young activists from Ireland, Argentina and France.

Mary Kate Harten and Trinity Kendi are the Irish activists who will hand over the petition.

The petition is titled Make TikTok safer for children and young people and it warns that TikTok’s can “impact the self-image, mental health and well-being of younger users”.

It further voices concern that the app “risks sending them down rabbit holes of triggering depressive and self-harm-related content”.

The petition is organised by Amnesty International and points to TikTok’s “For You” feed which shows users “personalised” content.

However, Amnesty said this algorithm can result in young people who view mental-health related content then being drawn into seeing more videos that discuss, or perhaps even encourage, depressive thoughts, self-harm and suicide.

Amnesty added: “The platform makes these predictions to show you more “personalized” content on your ‘For You’ feed so that you continue to addictively scroll, even if the content is harmful, and so that TikTok can target you with ads and make money.”

“This is why TikTok created its platform to be addictive by design,” added Amnesty.

While Amnesty acknowledges that TikTok is taking steps to “respect the rights of younger users in Europe by not allowing them to be targeted with personalised advertisements”, it noted that this practice is still allowed in the rest of the world.

Amnesty has called for young users to be able to choose for themselves, “based on their informed consent with child friendly language”, if they want a personalised feed in their settings.

And where users opt to have personalisation, Amnesty said TikTok should ask them to “actively communicate” what content they want to see in the ‘For You’ feed, instead of “designing the feed through the mass data collection of users’ online activity”.

Amnesty has also called for safeguards for users who opt to have personalisation to protect them “from falling into addictive use patterns and rabbit holes of borderline and harmful content”.