British regulators have launched an investigation into three companies, including TikTok, because of doubts about the effectiveness of the "parental control" function.

CTOnews.com, December 15 (Xinhua)-- British communications regulators released a report on Thursday local time, investigating how three leading video social networking platforms protect children from harmful videos: TikTok, Snap and video game streaming service Twitch, the Guardian reported.

The agency said it had asked TikTok to provide more information about the function of "CTOnews.com control" (Family Pairing, literally "family matching", where parents can associate their children's accounts to limit their children's use time, content, etc.), adding that "there is reason to believe that the information provided is inaccurate".

Tuyuan Pexels reported that more than 1/5 of local children between the ages of 8 and 17 have a personal account with "adult" profiles-all of which set their age to 18 or above. The UK's communications regulator also said that 1/3 of children between the ages of 8 and 15 had an account with a user age of 16 or above.

Regulators say TikTok uses "undisclosed" technology to detect and mark keywords in potential minor accounts, Twitch uses a variety of measures, including language analysis tools, and Snap reports underage users by relying on the power of other users.

TikTok said the problem was caused by "technology" and could cause some of the information provided to regulators to be "inaccurate". The company discovered the problem weeks ago and reported it to communications regulators, it said.