A steady diet of weight loss TikToks may be quite harmful to mental health, a new study finds.
Spending a lot of time on the social media platform — especially watching pro-anorexia content — could damage a young woman’s self-esteem and increase her risk of disordered eating, according to research out of Charles Sturt University in Australia.
“Our study showed that less than 10 minutes of exposure to implicit and explicit pro-anorexia TikTok content had immediate negative consequences for body image states and internalization of appearance ideals,” the researchers said about their findings, published Wednesday in PLOS ONE.
“Psychological harm can occur for young female TikTok users even when explicit pro-anorexia content is not sought out and when TikTok use is of a short duration,” they added.
The app boasts more than a billion monthly active users worldwide. Researchers sought out university freshmen in Australia — most of the women recruited did not finish the initial questionnaire. Two hundred and seventy-three women between 18 and 28 years old ended up meeting the participation requirements.
They were surveyed about their TikTok usage, body image and attitudes toward beauty standards while researchers looked for symptoms of disordered eating and calculated their risk for orthorexia — an unhealthy obsession with “pure” or “healthy” foods.
Half the participants then watched seven to eight minutes of disordered eating content from TikTok, including young women starving themselves, providing weight loss tips such as eating
ice and chewing gum to curb hunger, or promoting workouts or juice cleanses while showing off their cinched waists.
The other participants viewed neutral content related to nature, cooking, animals or comedy.
Both groups reported a decrease in body image satisfaction after screening the videos. Those exposed to pro-anorexia content felt especially worse about themselves while internalizing the belief that it is important to be thin.
Women who used TikTok more than two hours a day reported more disordered eating behaviors, but it was not a significant pattern, the researchers said.
To combat this problem, the study authors are recommending “more stringent controls and regulations” on pro-anorexia, disordered eating and body-related TikTok content.
“There are current steps being taken to delete dangerous content, including blocking searches such as ‘#anorexia,’ however, there are various ways users circumvent these controls and further regulation is required,” the researchers wrote.
Data for this study was collected in mid-2021, nearly three years before TikTok updated its community guidelines in April to crack down on harmful weight loss content.
The platform doesn’t allow “showing or promoting disordered eating and dangerous 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’s triggering for one person may be completely fine for another.
Meanwhile, President Biden signed a law in April that gives TikTok’s Chinese owner ByteDance until Jan. 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.
