Minutes of scrolling TikTok can harm young women’s mental health: study

Published earlier this month in PLOS One, a peer-reviewed open-access journal, the study indicates that social media can distort women’s perceptions of their appearance. This distortion is driven by frequent comparisons to others and the pressure to meet “unrealistic, unhealthy” beauty standards.

TikTok, a platform with over 1 billion users, allows the creation and viewing of short videos. Content related to beauty standards often spreads easily on the platform.

Researchers from Australia-based Charles Sturt University conducted a survey of 273 women aged 18 to 28, primarily from Australia, with 15 participants residing outside the country. Their study used a comprehensive questionnaire that included demographic questions and five scales measuring disordered eating behavior, body satisfaction, internalization of societal beauty standards, and perfectionism.

Participants were divided into two groups, each viewing different eight-minute compilations of TikTok videos.

One group was shown content that glorified eating disorders, often referred to as “pro-anorexia” material, including “fitspiration” clips of women working out and promoting weight loss techniques. The other group watched videos related to nature, cooking, and comedy.

Both groups experienced a decline in body image satisfaction after viewing the compilations, but the group exposed to pro-anorexia content experienced the most significant decrease and a stronger tendency to internalize unrealistic beauty standards.

Internalization occurs when an individual adopts and identifies with external beauty standards. While exposure to harmful social media content doesn’t always result in negative outcomes, internalization of such content typically leads to a detrimental impact on body image.

The study also found that participants who used TikTok for more than two hours a day reported more disordered eating behaviors compared to those who used it less frequently. However, this difference was not statistically significant, meaning it did not reach the level required to confidently rule out the possibility of chance.

On a scale measuring eating disorder symptoms, participants with high (2-3 hours a day) and extreme (more than three hours a day) TikTok use had average scores just below the threshold for clinically significant eating disorder symptoms. This suggests that spending more than two hours a day on TikTok may be associated with disordered eating, though further research is necessary to explore this potential link.