The most popular food, nutrition, and weight-related TikToks expose young people to damaging rhetoric around body image and losing weight. While social medias harmful effects on self esteem and body image is not a new phenomenon, a new study published in PlosOne this week casts a wider lens on the relationship between TikTok, food and body image, and young adults.
In the study, conducted by University of Vermont Committee on Human Research in the Behavioral and Social Sciences, researchers downloaded 1,000 TikToks related to food, nutrition, and weight in 2020. The top 10 most viewed videos under 10 different hashtags, some weight-normative (focusing on weight as the main determinant of health) and others seemingly weight-inclusive such as #weightloss #bodypositivity #whatieatinaday #nutrition #diet #mealprep (each with roughly a billion views), were then analyzed for key themes, including the celebration of weight loss, the idealization of thinness, and the absence of expert voices on the topic. At the time of collection, the #weightloss tag alone garnered nearly 10 billion views, and the study concluded that these videos demonstrated a narrow and not scientifically backed view of health as related to weight loss, Dr. Lizzy Pope, author on the study, associate professor and director of the Didactic Program in Dietetics at the University of Vermont, tells Fortune.
Not to mention, the videos shame those who are perfectly healthy and reside in larger bodies, as if they need to change something to be happier or fit in. Almost 44% of the videos studied were related to weight loss: over a fifth of those showed someones weight loss changes visually, and less than 3% had any weight inclusive content.
We know that people are struggling with [body image and weight]. Seeing this content that makes weight loss look really easy or achievable just reinforces kind of a fantasy that doesnt exist, Pope says.
The fitness-related content also had a key focus on weight loss and the study found that people spoke about being happier once achieving weight loss goals which can falsely tie weight to self-worth.
Weve all been told that we need to maintain certain weights or bad things are gonna happen to us, and then were desperate to fit into that thin ideal, Pope says. In actuality, the vast majority of diets fail, and cycling between weights has its own health implications, Pope says. The researchers write that, videos glorifying weight loss on TikTok represent a moment in time, but do not show the longer-term effects of weight loss interventions.
Even the common #whatieatinaday or #mealprep tags perpetuate a view of using food as a means to attain an idealized body image or weight over simply eating for enjoyment and nourishment. Almost half of the nutrition related content the team coded seemed to give food advice, many about losing weight or what to eat and not eat, per the studys results. And something seemingly hopeful like the #bodypositivity tag still had weight normative coding, Pope says.
What we noticed was, there was an undertone of having to justify, its okay for me to feel good about my body if it doesnt conform to the thin ideal, and Im justifying it, she says. Pope also came across videos that read something like, The five ab exercises to do in your bedroom to achieve results. Videos like this allude to a certain aesthetic, charm, and even seduction, she says, but are not accurate nor helpful. They can actually lead to disordered eating behaviors and thoughts, like feeling guilt, shame, and anxiety around food, or constantly dieting and skipping meals, to name a few.
Maybe most jarring is that the content, viewed billions of times, is largely created and put out in the world by a subset of young people: those who are predominantly white and dont reside in larger bodies. In their analysis, the researchers found that 1.4% of the nutrition content coded was created by a registered dietician.
Its really young people talking to each other about food, nutrition and bodies, Pope says, noting that a lot of people are left off of the stage and cannot see themselves in the content. Teenagers that were creating this content are not going to listen to my TikToks, she says. There are registered dietitians and experts on the platform but, by and large, its the young people who are gaining the views and drawing attention to the false assumptions around what is already commonplace in society, she says, and reinforces what they see.
While eating disorders dont commonly have one sole trigger, this type of content seen on a consistent basis can trigger or exacerbate eating disorder symptoms, or make recovery that much more difficult, Dr. Elizabeth Wallis, an expert at youth eating disorders and director at the Friedman Center for Eating Disorders, tells Fortune.
What can parents and guardians keep in mind?
Talk to your child about their social media consumption
In this day and age, it feels difficult to ban all social media or take children away from the potentially positive social aspects of being connected online. Instead, consider being open about social media with your child and asking them: what are you consuming? What are you learning about food and bodies, and what interests you about that? Is this backed in facts?
Consider helping them recognize the power that some of that content can have, Wallis says.
It can serve to challenge the ideals that are not evidence based and rework the narrative so commonly thrown to the public.
I encourage parents to be curious and pay close attention to the cultural messages their children receive, to watch and talk about content together, to manage their feeds by unfriending / unfollowing triggering profiles, says Kristina Saffron, CEO and cofounder of Equip, which provides a team of experts to help families recover from eating disorders.
How you speak about food and bodies matters
There are messages everywhere that label food as good or bad, which can contribute to the shame when people eat certain foods and lead to anxiety about food and body image. You may say something without intentionally talking about weight, like treating yourself, or burning something off, or saying you dont deserve to have a certain kind of food. Negative classifications of food can slip out when youre around your kids, Pope says.
Kids pick up on what their parents are doing and how their parents value their own bodies and their own body talk, Pope says. If you are talking negatively about your own body, kids will figure that out.
Know that eating disorders dont look the same in everyone
Many assume that people need to look like they are underweight to be considered to have an eating disorder when in reality, people of all body types struggle with eating disorders.
Its often kids in larger bodies who have really bad eating disorders that never get help because nobody thinks that thats possible, Pope says.
Dont for someone to show the signs of an eating disorder to take action, or solely monitor how you talk about food; be mindful that anyone can struggle with a poor relationship with themselves, food, or how they look. When talking to young people, emphasize that there is a larger societal issue around what is deemed healthy and not, taking the onus off of the individual to have to combat this all alone.
We have to be spending so much of our lives, eating and manipulating our bodies to achieve certain sizes, and thats such a waste of effort, Pope says. How do we dismantle that culture across the board? Because especially for women, we have been victim to the patriarchal deployment of diet culture for so long were not buying it anymore.
