How TikTok is making women feel worse about their bodies

By Stephen Beech via SWNS

TikTok videos glamourizing eating disorders and extremely thin images make women feel worse about their bodies, warns a new study.

Less than 10 minutes of consuming content on the video sharing site can have an "immediate" impact on young women’s body image satisfaction, say Australian scientists.

They found that women who spend a lot of time on TikTok - especially those seeing lots of pro-anorexia content - feel worse about their appearance.

Their results, published in the journal PL O S One , suggest that high TikTok exposure could harm mental health, reduce body image satisfaction and increase the risk of eating disorders.

Study co-author Dr. Rachel Hogg, of Charles Sturt University in New South Wales, Australia said: "Since its launch, the short-form video app TikTok has had more than two billion downloads.

"The app’s algorithm curates content on a 'For You' page based on a user’s interactions with previous videos, and content which glamourizes disordered eating behavior and extremely thin body image ideals can therefore quickly fill a user’s feed."

To understand how TikTok content might affect women’s body image, Dr Hogg and her colleagues surveyed 273 women between the age of 18 and 28.

They asked how much they used TikTok, and screened them for symptoms of eating disorders as well as body image, their attitudes toward beauty standards, and risk for orthorexia—a set of restricted diets and eating patterns focused on ridding oneself of “impure” or “unhealthy” foods.

Half the participants then watched a compilation of disordered eating content from TikTok - including young women starving themselves or providing weight loss tips alongside juice cleanse and workout videos - while the other half viewed neutral content with nature, cooking and animal themes.

Both groups reported a decrease in body image satisfaction after watching the videos, but those exposed to pro-anorexia content had the biggest decrease - and also showed an increase in internalization of beauty standards.

Dr. Hogg said that women who used TikTok more than two hours per day reported more disordered eating behaviors, but the findings were not significant.

"While the study did not address how exposure to pro-anorexia content might affect people over time, the results suggest that weight-loss focused TikTok content might negatively affect viewers’ body image and beauty standards."

The researchers recommend better controls over pro-anorexia content on TikTok.

Dr. Hogg added: “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, suggesting 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.”

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