A steady diet of TikToks can be quite harmful to mental health, a new study finds.
Spending too much time on a social media platform – especially viewing pro-anorexia content – can damage a young woman’s self-esteem and increase her risk of disordered eating, according to a study from Charles Sturt University in Australia.
“Our study showed that as little as 10 minutes of exposure to implicit and explicit pro-anorexia content on TikTok had immediate negative consequences for body image states and the internalization of appearance ideals,” the researchers said of their findings, published Wednesday in PLOS ONE.
“Psychological harm can occur for young female TikTok users even when no clear pro-anorexia content is required and when TikTok use is of short duration,” they added.
The app boasts more than one billion monthly active users worldwide. The researchers recruited university freshmen in Australia – most of the recruited women did not complete the initial questionnaire. Two hundred seventy-three women between the ages of 18 and 28 completed the participation requirements.
They were surveyed about their TikTok use, body image and attitudes towards beauty standards, while researchers looked for symptoms of disordered eating and calculated their risk of orthorexia – an unhealthy obsession with “clean” foods or “healthy”.
Half of the participants then watched seven to eight minutes of messy food content from TikTok, featuring starving young women offering weight loss advice such as
ice and gum to curb hunger, or promoting exercise or fluid cleansing while showing off their toned waists.
Other participants viewed neutral content related to nature, cooking, animals, or comedy.
Both groups reported a decrease in body image satisfaction after viewing the videos. Those exposed to pro-anorexia content felt particularly worse about themselves as they internalized the belief that being thin is important.
Women who used TikTok more than two hours a day reported more disordered eating behaviors, but this was not a significant pattern, the researchers said.
To combat this problem, the study’s authors recommend “stricter controls and regulations” for pro-anorexia, disordered eating, and body-related TikTok content.
“There are current steps being taken to remove dangerous content, including blocking searches such as ‘#anorexia,’ however, there are various ways for users to circumvent these controls and further regulation is required,” the researchers wrote .
The data for this study was collected in mid-2021, nearly three years before TikTok updated its community guidelines in April to combat harmful weight loss content.
The platform does not allow “narrating or promoting disordered eating and weight loss behaviors.”
A TikTok spokesperson told The Post on Wednesday that it is working to ensure users have a diverse and safe viewing experience, because what triggers one person may be completely fine for another.
Meanwhile, President Biden signed a law in April that gives TikTok’s Chinese owner ByteDance until January. 19, 2025, to sell the app or face a total ban amid data security concerns.
TikTok and ByteDance have taken their case to federal court, with oral arguments scheduled for next month.
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