The content you watch on social media, not just lengthy movies but even short clips that you come across while scrolling, affects your psyche, and the impact is immediate, suggests a study.
Watching even just 8 minutes of TikTok videos glamorizing disordered eating behavior can harm women's mental health and negatively affect their body image satisfaction, according to the study published in the journal Plus One.
While examining how social media influences disordered eating behavior and mental health in a group of 273 women between 18-28, the researchers noted that even short exposure to "pro-anorexia" content that glorifies extreme weight loss and restricted diet is sufficient to harm body image and to reinforce the notion that being thin is the ideal. Based on these findings, researchers called for stricter regulations around such harmful content as they affect women's attitudes toward beauty standards, increase body dissatisfaction, and risk of developing disordered eating behavior.
"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," the researchers wrote.
During the trial, the participants were asked about their TikTok usage and screened for symptoms of disordered eating, body image issues, attitudes toward beauty standards, and risk for orthorexia— restricted eating that avoids "impure" or "unhealthy" foods or behaviors.
Half of the participants then watched a 7-8 minute compilation of TikTok videos showing disordered eating content, such as young women starving themselves or sharing weight loss tips with a juice cleanse and workout videos. The other half watched neutral content featuring nature, cooking, and animals.
"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 showed an increase in internalization of beauty standards," the news release stated.
Women who used TikTok for more than two hours a day reported more disordered eating behaviors, though this was not a significant pattern. The study did not explore the long-term effects of pro-anorexia content on women's health.
The researchers suggested an effective approach would be to tackle the issue at the source by bringing in better regulations on platforms. "There is a need for more stringent controls and regulations from TikTok in relation to pro-anorexia content as well as more subtle forms of disordered eating- and body-related content. Prohibiting or restricting access to pro-anorexia content on TikTok may reduce the development of disordered eating and the longevity and severity of established eating disorder symptomatology among young women in the TikTok community," they wrote.
