Diet Culture Is Running Rampant on TikTok
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When Chris Henrie first shared his experience about being in an inpatient facility to treat his eating disorder on his TikTok account, he was blown away by the response.
“It’s been overwhelmingly positive,” Henrie says, whose TikToks are known for being transparently honest mixed with plenty of dry humor.
Henrie currently has more than 270,000 followers on TikTok and more than 13,000 subscribers on a separate YouTube channel. He considers himself an anorexia awareness and recovery advocate.
“Through my videos, I try to illustrate a real and non-fabricated look at what recovery looks like, and I think people are drawn to and relate to a lot of what I say,” Henrie says.
But despite Henrie’s informative profile, another side of TikTok isn’t as careful when it comes to discussing eating disorders and triggering content — a situation that’s heightened given TikTok’s main “For You” feed.
On the For You page, a user scrolls through content that the app's algorithm has deemed popular. Once a user favorites a video or interacts with it in other ways, they’ll see others like it as part of their personalized For You page.
Since the internet’s inception, it’s been near impossible to browse online without coming across content about dieting, oftentimes teetering on the edge of disordered eating. And more seriously, pro-anorexia, or “pro-ana,” content has existed since the early days of blogging.
When TikTok users search for the phrase “proana,” they were at one point led to a page with the Suicide Hotline and other help tips.
However, other searches that slightly misspell the phrase may result in triggering videos of people blatantly displaying disordered eating behavior — from weighing themselves to performing “body checks.” In February, BuzzFeed News reporter Cameron Wilson reported “anecdotal evidence from users says TikTok's For You Page increasingly shows content about eating disorders after they watch just one video on the topic.” TikTok didn't answer BuzzFeed News's specific questions, but said it's committed to getting rid of such videos.
“TikTok was built to provide a positive place for creativity. We care deeply about the wellbeing of our users and continue to build upon our protective measures and offer in-app resources for our community,” a representative from TikTok said in a statement to Teen Vogue. “Content that supports or encourages eating disorders is strictly against our Community Guidelines and will be removed."
But across the app, trends such as users showing off potentially dangerous and unregulated “metabolism-boosting” supplements to consuming diet smoothies have gone viral, meaning any of the app’s 800 million users might have come across it on their feed.
“Oh yeah, my For You page is clogged with a lot of that stuff,” says TikTok user Ramsey Shindell .
Like Henrie, Shindell is open on the app about her past in treatment for an eating disorder. But having users show off their diets and weight loss, Shindell says, can tread a very fine line between healthy behavior and disordered eating — especially given the young users on the app.
“It’s hard because it’s difficult sometimes to distinguish between what is harmful and what is okay to post,” Shindell says. “When you see these ... diets and drops, it’s different. I think creators, people who are older and have more capacity to think about what they’re posting have an additional responsibility, and I’ve been trying to be more mindful about what I post.”
One thing Shindell’s seen on her “For You” page in particular is a promoted advertisement for an intermittent fasting app DoFasting. Intermittent fasting is a popular type of diet where users limit eating to a certain time window and fast during the day’s other hours.
The intermittent fasting diet has been promised by its proponents to lead to a “better health and longer life,” according to Harvard Medical School’s online publication, Harvard Health Publishing, but restricting calories through fasting can also be risky for vulnerable populations.
In a statement to Teen Vogue when asked for comment on its advertising on TikTok, a representative from DoFasting said, “Bear in mind that TikTok users are of various age groups. We choose our audience carefully, and we tend to actively address the older audience.”
“We encourage our users to develop healthy eating habits, we do not encourage our users to engage in dangerous eating patterns. We are against starving your body, and we know that intermittent fasting is sometimes confused with starvation. In this blog post we explicitly say ‘Intermittent fasting is not promoting food deprivation.’ ”
In all, it’s difficult to say what, if anything, will happen next. Claire Mysko, Chief Executive Officer, National Eating Disorder Association (NEDA), likened TikTok’s apparent rise of harmful trending content to that on other platforms such as Tumblr and Instagram.
“Younger folks are particularly vulnerable to external messages — including those around food and appearance,” a NEDA representative said in a statement to Teen Vogue.
But according to NEDA, one thing’s for sure — users like Henrie and Shindell are doing the right thing by sharing their healthy, educational, and transparent knowledge about eating disorders.
“We are inspired by our community members who want to make TikTok, Instagram, and other platforms a safe space for people who are struggling, at risk, or in recovery from an eating disorder — and we encourage folks to use their voice and continue expressing concerns about content that perpetuates diet culture and disordered eating.”
By Kalina Newman for Teen Vogue