The social media platform has announced - during a safety forum at its European headquarters in Dublin - that teenagers will no longer be able to use beauty filters on TikTok amid concerns around rising anxiety and falling self-esteem in adolescents.

Users who are under the age of 18 will soon be blocked from artificially making their eyes bigger, plumping their lips and smoothing or changing their skin tone using filters.

The restrictions will apply to filters – such as 'Bold Glamour' – that change children’s features in a way that make-up can't. But comic filters that add bunny ears or dog noses will be unaffected by the changes.

However, in order for the restrictions to be effective, it will depend whether users have created accounts under their real age or not, which isn't always done.

TikTok has also announced that it's blocking users under the age of 13 from the platform, which could mean that thousands of British children are stopped from using the app. The team are planning to launch a trial of new automated systems that use machine learning to detect people cheating its age restrictions by the end of the year.

Chloe Setter, TikTok’s lead on child safety public policy, said: “We’re hoping that this will give us the ability to detect and remove more and more quickly.”