In a transfer harking back to Fb’s early days, TikTok is launching a brand new characteristic that enables school college students to search out and join with others on their campus. The characteristic, known as Campus Verification, lets customers add their school campus to their TikTok profile and flick through an inventory of scholars at their faculty.

To entry the characteristic, customers must navigate to their profile and faucet the “Add faculty” button. From there, they should enter their faculty title after which choose their commencement yr.

To confirm that they really go to the college they entered, they should present their tutorial e-mail tackle. As soon as full, their school title and commencement yr might be displayed on their profile.

Customers can then browse their faculty’s web page, filter by commencement yr, and look at the entire customers who’ve added the college to their profile. They’ll additionally kind the customers record to point out the most-followed customers first.

The characteristic is obtainable throughout greater than 6,000 universities via TikTok’s partnership with UNiDAYS, a pupil verification platform that confirms pupil standing.

TikTok says the concept behind the characteristic is to show its platform right into a hub for real-world connections and belonging on campus, which is actually what Fb’s unique mission was when it launched in 2004 as a manner for Harvard college students to attach with each other.

TikTok’s new characteristic could possibly be a welcome addition for faculty college students seeking to join with others on campus. Nevertheless, it additionally raises issues about digital privateness, because it may make it simpler for customers to trace others on-line. After all, the characteristic is non-obligatory, so those that choose to maintain their TikTok presence separate from their pupil life can select to easily not add their faculty to their profile.

It’s value noting that the launch comes as Instagram was spotted testing a similar feature final yr that might enable customers to show their faculty data and commencement yr on their profile and join with different college students. It’s unknown if the characteristic was scraped or if the Meta-owned platform nonetheless plans to roll it out.