Almost half Young Australians are dissatisfied with the looks of their body.
Social media has only made this possible body perception problems worse for young people, which causes them to compare themselves to others and strive for occasionally unattainable – and unhealthy – standards of beauty.
TikTok, which allows users to create and watch short videos, has amassed over 1 billion users. Harmful content easily circulates on the platform, including videos glorifying eating disorders and very thin bodies.
Considering that almost all TikTok users are like that youngwe wanted to investigate how such content affects the body image of young women. Our recent study found that watching just eight minutes of TikTok content focused on diets, weight reduction, and exercise had a direct negative impact on body image satisfaction.
Body image and sweetness standards
We recruited 273 female-identifying TikTok users aged 18 to 28 and randomly assigned them to two groups. Those with a past or current eating disorder diagnosis were excluded from the study.
Participants within the experimental group were shown a 7-8-minute compilation of “pro-anorexia” and “fitspiration” content pulled directly from TikTok. In these videos, young women restricted their food intake and offered exercise and food plan advice, resembling describing their juice cleanses for weight reduction.
Participants within the control group watched a 7-8-minute compilation of TikTok videos featuring “neutral” content, resembling nature, cooking, and animal videos.
Using a series of questionnaires, we measured participants’ levels of body image satisfaction and attitudes toward beauty standards before and after they viewed TikTok content.
Both groups reported a decrease in body image satisfaction before and after watching the videos. However, those exposed to pro-anorexia content experienced the best decrease in body image satisfaction. They also experienced a rise in internalization of beauty standards.
Internalization occurs when someone accepts and identifies with external standards of beauty. Exposure to harmful content on social media doesn’t all the time lead to harm – it’s when this content is internalized that body image is probably going to suffer.
Before the video experiment, we asked participants some general questions on their TikTok use. We also measured preoccupation with “healthy” eating and eating disorder symptoms.
We found that participants who used TikTok for greater than two hours per day reported more disordered eating than users who used it less often. However, this difference was not statistically significant. This signifies that the difference between groups didn’t reach the edge required to conclude that it was unlikely to be the result of likelihood.
On a scale used to assess eating disorder symptoms, participants who reported high (2–3 hours per day) and extreme (greater than 3 hours per day) levels of TikTok use had average scores just under the edge for clinically significant eating disorder symptoms. This suggests that exposure to TikTok content for greater than two hours per day could also be related to eating disorders, but more research is required to investigate this.
Paul Hanaoka/Unsplash
Harmful content is common
The content we showed the experimental group is widely shared on TikTok, and not only within the “pro-ana” community. “Clean” eating, detoxing, and limited-ingredient diets are the wolf in sheep’s clothing of eating disorders, allowing food plan culture to be rebranded as “wellness” and “self-care.” This content, together with fitness inspirationoften rewards and treats excessive exercise and eating disorders as fun.
Social media influencers play a task in wellness essential role in normalizing disordered eating and fitspiration content. But hashtags like #GymTok and #FoodTok allow any TikTok user to create and eat content around their and others’ each day eating habits, weight-loss transformations, and exercise routines.
What’s more, regular users can share unsafe food plan videos without facing the backlash that a star or well-known influencer might face for sharing socially irresponsible content.
Our study only checked out the short-term consequences of exposure to this sort of content on TikTok. Longitudinal studies are needed to see whether the negative effects we observed persist over time.
It’s still hard to censor
TikTok users have limited control over the content they’re exposed to. Because they spend most of their time on a customized “For You” page curated by the algorithm, a user doesn’t have to seek for or follow eating disorder content to be exposed to it.
In our study, 64% of participants reported seeing eating disorder content on their For You page. Examples include videos of binge eating, laxative use, or excessive exercise.
Paradoxically, the search body positivity content may expose users to content about eating disorders.
The most vital thing TikTok users can do is remember that following or trying to find any content related to food, body, or exercise can lead to inadvertent exposure to distorted body ideals. Limiting the time spent on TikTok will limit exposure, but our findings show that even lower than ten minutes can have a negative impact.
Ultimately, young people’s online safety depends on proper social media regulation. Without it, educating young women about how to avoid harm on social media is a bit like giving them an inflatable life jacket after which leaving them to swim against the present perpetually.