EDITOR’S NOTE: Oona Hanson is a writer, educator and parent coach who specializes in helping families navigate diet culture and eating disorders.
While the internet’s darkest corners have always harbored harmful ideas, a new TikTok trend takes hazardous pro-eating disorder content out of the shadows and into the view of millions of people.
SkinnyTok, the viral weight-loss hashtag on TikTok, goes beyond typical fitness and nutrition advice and instead recommends dangerous levels of restriction with a side of verbal abuse.
Those in hard-fought recovery from anorexia have raised concerns that this craze poses a serious health risk, particularly for young women, who are the main target of these weight-loss messages.
Often referred to as “thinspo” or “pro-ana,” online content encouraging eating disorder behaviors is nothing new, but TikTok’s video format and algorithm now spread this type of content far and wide rather than it staying confined to a smaller community of users .
TikTok declined to respond to my questions directly, but a spokesperson shared some of the steps they say the company takes, such as interrupting repetitive content and directing users to mental health resources, including organizations that specialize in eating disorder recovery. Those users who want to limit weight-loss content can filter out particular words and hashtags.
Despite TikTok’s policy that explicitly prohibits “showing or promoting disordered eating and dangerous weight loss behaviors,” I still find that these shocking videos continue to proliferate on the platform.
Prior pro-eating disorder content on sites like Tumblr or X “were more niche in the sense that they were more directed toward people who had eating disorders,” said Mallary Tenore Tarpley, an assistant professor of practice at the University of Texas at Austin, whose first book, “Slip: Life in the Middle of Eating Disorder Recovery,” will be released in August.
Rather than something an already struggling person might seek out to reinforce their mental illness, SkinnyTok is out in the open and even presented as healthy.
Tarpley worries the average viewer is unlikely to recognize how extreme and dangerous these messages are. “Because they are framed as just this sort of wellness movement or healthy eating, they become more mainstream, and therefore people don’t necessarily see the toxicity in them,” she said.
When Los Angeles-based licensed clinical social worker Shira Rosenbluth first came across this kind of content, she was surprised at the resurgence of these dangerous messages.
“We’re still doing this twentysomething years later?” Rosenbluth asked. “We’re still in exactly the same place where we’re glorifying not just fitness, we’re glorifying eating disorders and disordered eating? You see them say it’s not about being skinny, it’s just about being healthy. And it’s like, OK, but why is it called SkinnyTok?”
Some of the viral content is so outrageous, Rosenbluth even wondered if it’s simply “rage-bait,” an attempt to get reactions and attention simply by being so offensive. Even if influencers are posting this shocking content primarily to drive engagement, the primary audience — teen girls and young women — are still being put in harm’s way.
While some defenders of this content argue it’s not meant to be taken seriously, Tarpley finds the trending motifs often describe specific anorexia symptoms. “Sometimes the advice given may seem like it’s supposed to be humorous, but in fact a lot of people struggling with eating disorders actually engage in those very same behaviors, and it is far from funny.”
She shared how one popular SkinnyTok trend was eerily similar to something she experienced while in the throes of anorexia as a child. “I saw one video where someone said, ‘If you’re sleeping and wake in the middle of the night hungry, just chew on your pillow,’” she said. “I remember doing something similar when I was younger.”
The kinds of weight-loss tips popular on the platform “could become a guidebook for people with eating disorders or for people who are flirting with dieting and are predisposed to developing an eating disorder,” Tarpley added. “It becomes this very slippery slope where you hear these ideas that are expressed in jest, or you hear the shaming and then you begin to really believe that it’s true.”
Demeaning messages about people’s eating and bodies are popular on SkinnyTok, and Rosenbluth understands why people might be attracted to such negativity.
“It’s almost like an abuse victim who thinks that’s what they deserve,” said Rosenbluth, who is in recovery from anorexia. “I’m especially thinking about like a larger teenager who has been taught that their body is bad and their body is wrong, and that they need to do everything they can to change their body. They think they deserve to be talked to like that.”
Speaking from her clients’ experiences and her own, Rosenbluth recognized the way these influencers’ cruel messages often directly echo the internal torment of people with eating disorders.
“The bully voice sounds similar to the eating disorder voice,” she said. “Someone in any size body with an eating disorder is talking to themselves like that internally. People describe it as this monster that’s in their head, kind of screaming at them all the time.”
While Rosenbluth noted that she and her patients used to feel that “nobody could be meaner than this monster, (it’s possible that) the TikTok bullies are equal. This constant voice, telling them that they are nothing, that they’re garbage, that they’re not worthy, that they shouldn’t be seen, that they shouldn’t be heard, that they need to be thin.”
Rosenbluth finds one of the popular taglines — “You don’t need a treat. You’re not a dog” — particularly disturbing because of its implication that satisfying basic hunger and need for pleasure makes you less than human. “It’s scary that we’re saying the human right of eating and enjoying food is something that is so wildly wrong when it’s actually human, a part of life,” she said.
These dehumanizing messages are a recipe for stress and suffering, but they’re sold to viewers as “tough love” or even self-care. Particularly for impressionable young people, these influencers promote “this belief that we need to be thin in order to be beautiful and accepted and loved,” added Tarpley.
People swept up in following these “thinfluencers” aren’t usually aware of the serious risks that come with adopting their rigid dietary advice.
“What’s really scary to me is that teenagers and young adults, if they start restricting, they can do permanent damage. We’re talking about permanent bone loss and osteoporosis later on in life,” Rosenbluth said. “Restriction can impact the entire body.”
The conflation of thinness with health can make it hard for parents to notice if their teen is absorbing this dangerous content. Rosenbluth worries especially about adolescents and knows they need support to set limits on how much time they spend on social media. “People can get sucked in for hours on end, and no teenager needs that.”
The sheer volume of exposure to this harmful content concerns Tarpley, too. “The algorithms are designed in such a way that if you begin to kind of flirt with some of this content, you’re going to start seeing it more and more in your feed,” she said. “It becomes very hard then to escape that. And that can lead people down these rabbit holes that can be really dark and really hard to get out of.”
Parents who observe their child restricting food or exercising excessively shouldn’t dismiss the behaviors as just a fad diet or an attempt to “be healthy” and get in shape.
“There’s this tendency to think that eating disorders are just some sort of passing phase or something that can be quickly overcome, and I will say, eating disorders can ruin lives. They can take lives,” Tarpley warned.
Most parents don’t know that trouble can start after exposure to content far less extreme than what’s on SkinnyTok. Throughout her career, Rosenbluth has worked with countless people “who started out on these innocent diets or just wanting to lose a few pounds, and now they’re completely consumed.”
It’s easy for an eating disorder to start but incredibly hard to end it. “That period of developing an eating disorder can be quite quick, but it can take years, and in some cases a lifetime, for people to actually recover,” Tarpley noted.
Tarpley wishes adults and teens understood the serious risks of engaging with this kind of content: “People think, well, it’s just social media. There’s no way I could develop an eating disorder just because of some videos I see. But in talking with lots of people with all different types of eating disorders, I recognize that’s very much something that could happen. So, I think the more we can talk about this reality, the better.”
Note: If you or someone you know may be struggling with an eating disorder, the National Alliance for Eating Disorders provides resources and referrals.
