Fifteen-year-old Gracie was convinced that she needed to lose weight. She spent much of her time on social media obsessing about her body image and zeroing in on “thinspiration” content and pro-anorexia images. Convinced that weight loss would make her more popular, she adhered to a severely restricted diet, fantasizing about how great she would look when she was finally skinny enough.
Unfortunately, Gracie wasn’t consuming enough calories to maintain her health. She began to lack energy and enthusiasm. Eventually, she was dragging through her days, struggling to keep up with her schoolwork and her life. Still, she denied that she had a problem.
Gracie had developed an eating disorder, one that would take her years to conquer.
Similar scenarios have played out in the lives of dozens of young girls who have been influenced by the current social media-driven trend to achieve ultra-thinness and have taken things too far in an unhealthy direction.
According to the New York Post, “the disturbing viral movement promotes extreme weight-loss tactics, restrictive eating, and ‘discipline’ — with thinness, not health, being the ultimate goal.” And it often accomplishes this by using shame and guilt to push people into making drastic reductions in their food intake, disciplining themselves to resist what, in many cases, their bodies actually need.
Instead, they are encouraged to use “hacks to suppress hunger, skip meals, and manage starvation.” Or there can be emphasis on drinking excess water to curb food cravings, which can potentially cause electrolytes to become unbalanced over time.
Such tactics can be brutal. Many of the thousands of “SkinnyTok” posts are loaded with toxic, body-shaming language. For many people, this can lead to disordered eating or actual eating disorders, which can be life-threatening. It can easily cause a negative self-image, which often contributes to anxiety and may also result in depression.
Susceptible Minds
Adolescents, with their need for inclusion, are especially susceptible to trends like SkinnyTok. Plus, their developing minds and bodies are even more vulnerable than adults to incurring damage from the extreme measures promoted within the trend—and to obsession over them. Indeed, for this age group, eating disorders have risen dramatically. Since the recent pandemic, eating disorders have increased by up to 40 percent in six- to 18-year-olds.
Several European countries have expressed concern about this disturbing trend, which some experts say promotes starvation. But it is by no means the first time TikTok has been accused of doing little to combat a toxic wave of media output. There have been recent lawsuits against the China-based media platform by parents in France and the UK whose children died after following toxic trends on TikTok.
In the USA., multiple states have sued TikTok for promoting dangerous trends to children, using algorithms that feed questionable material to minors. In Alabama’s lawsuit, filed in April of this year, the complaint states: “Research shows that social media addiction plays a key role in the mental health crisis, and no social media service is more addictive than TikTok.” It says that American children are facing higher than ever levels of “depression, anxiety, substance abuse, eating disorders, suicide, and social media addiction.”
Ideally, social media platforms would carefully balance content creation with the responsibility to protect users, especially minors, from harmful influences. It’s a formidable, but workable, challenge. Yet, it probably comes as little surprise that social media platforms often shirk their duty and focus on their own profits, leaving kids vulnerable.
The current situation certainly isn’t TikTok’s only dereliction of duty. Last year, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against the company for “widespread violation of children’s privacy laws” in which they “collected and retained a wide variety of personal information from … children without notifying or obtaining consent from their parents.”
Fully Aware
All of this reemphasizes how critical it is for parents to be fully aware of what their kids are doing online. Furthermore, it’s essential that parents not only stay on top of trends but also have calm, open discussions with their children about them.
So, should parents discourage their children from getting caught up in health and fitness trends? Not necessarily. Health and fitness are important. However, parents should understand the details of the trends their kids are exposed to and bring them up in family discussions. That way, they can promote balance and common sense rather than obsession.
Instead of abandoning their children’s health to the hands of social media influencers, parents can take the initiative and model good health principles to their kids through consistent example, teaching them the best and safest ways to obtain a healthy, fit body.
Watch What You Consume
For both kids and adults, it’s essential that we become more aware of what we are exposed to and monitor what we allow into our minds. What we view regularly can have a tremendous impact on our attitudes, beliefs, and even our physical and emotional health—for good or for bad. Experts recommend carefully curating your feed on any social media platforms you frequent.
The Bible advises curating too, putting it this way: “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it” (Proverbs 4:23 NIV). What goes into our brain can impact every aspect of our life. If we truly want positive results, we need positive input.
This world delights in insults and putdowns, in spotlighting our flaws. But God wants us to focus on His immeasurable love for us, the infinite price He paid to redeem us, and the beautiful people we can become through Him. He always accepts us just as we are, then helps us to become more like Him—to be the best “us” we can be.
Would you like to know some healthy tips for losing weight—from God’s Word? Read the article “10 Bible Principles on How to Lose Weight.”