Credits: Social Media
Watching TikTok for just 10 minutes can hurt women’s self-image, study says
A fascinating new study by researchers in New South Wales, Australia sheds light on the impact TikTok content has on the way people internalize societal beauty standards and, ultimately, develop negative feelings towards how they look. Specifically, it set out to measure the influence of pro-anorexia TikTok content on young womens body image.
The researchers measured young womens body image and their internationalization of beauty standards before and after exposure to certain types of social media content. Remarkably, they found that even young women who view neutral content reported a decrease in body image satisfaction. In other words, even benign content of human bodies can hurt the way women see themselves in relation to others. Not only does TikTok have the power to affect the way you perceive others’ personalities. It can also turn you on yourself, and the implications for the mental health of young women are far-reaching, as well see.
What it means to internalize societal beauty standards
273 women between the ages of 18 and 28 took part in the study. The researchers split them into four groups based on how much time they spend on TikTok every day.
They asked them questions about how they felt about their bodies, and how much they felt they had internalized societal beauty standards these are the ideals of beauty that society and culture place on people.
To internalize something is to incorporate it within yourself.
For example, someone who has internalized societal beauty standards might answer yes to the question, Do you think thin people tend to be more attractive than other people? Some beauty standards are more realistic more attainable than others. Some are healthy, like being relatively fit and having clean teeth. Others are unhealthy, like being dangerously thin and wearing uncomfortable clothing that limits movement and gives you lesions.
TikTok content runs the gamut, from videos that explicitly reinforce beauty standards in their messaging and aesthetic, to videos that promote alternative views on beauty. In the middle is a large gray area, which includes videos that indirectly or implicitly align themselves with socially acceptable beauty standards.�
Even neutral TikTok content hurts young womens mental health
The researchers asked the participants these questions before and after showing them a bunch of TikTok content. Different groups were exposed to different types of content.
What they discovered which isnt very surprising is that the young women who saw videos that normalized disordered eating, such as those featuring weight-loss tips, excessive exercise routines, and images of emaciated figures, ended up with lesser perceptions of themselves.
I’m sure many of us have seen content on TikTok and other social media platforms and thought, “I wish I looked a bit more like that person.”
More surprising was that even the women who saw seemingly benign fitspiration content reported negatively when asked, afterward, about their body image and internalization of societal beauty standards.
The authors note that even harmless representations of the human body are sufficient to elicit a social comparison response in participants or in some capacity.
In other words, neutral content can reinforce the #fitspiration motifs commonly depicted on TikTok and inspire negative feelings in young female TikTok users.
Shockingly, it takes just 10 minutes for these effects to kick in, even when this content is unrelated to body dissatisfaction, thinness, or weight loss.
On the platform, TikTok consumers can come across figures representing three distinct social influences: media, peers, and family. The authors note that simultaneous exposure to all three categories may encourage internalization of appearance-ideals in a more profound manner than any of these three influences in isolation.
They conclude that effective controls are needed to reduce the development of disordered eating. And blocking searches such as #anorexia is not an example of effective control& Ultimately, the simplest way to avoid these negative consequences of TikTok content consumption is for vulnerable people to stop engaging with the platform. Unfortunately, that’s quite a lot easier said than done.
If you or someone you know needs support, there are many eating disorder helplines in the UK here to help. Beat can be contacted at 0808 801 0677 while Mind’s contact number is 0300 123 3393.
If you are based in the USA, you can call NEDA on (800) 931-2237.
