I fell victim to TikTok's harmful eating disorder content

TikTok videos of dogs used to pop onto my For You Page once in every 100 videos; but the other 99 were different. These consisted of “what I eat in a day” videos, girls starving themselves to get abs, or dangerous hacks to cut calories.

This is the reality of eating disorder TikTok – and what led me to nearly being hospitalised after I lost over three stone.

The #whatieatinaday videos are simple: the user films everything they eat within a 24-hour period to give an insight into what they consume to maintain their current body image.

Here’s a real example: 11am: smoothie. 2pm: strawberries. 5pm: carrot sticks and hummus. 7pm: burrito and a glass of water. A total of less than 1,200 calories – the same amount a toddler needs. Yes, you read that right.

The #whatieatinaday has over 15.1 billion views on a social media platform where 41 per cent of users are aged between 16 and 24 – the typical age bracket where people are vulnerable to developing disorders and can be at risk from developing harmful behaviours.

For me, the behaviours developed slowly. I wanted to lose weight so started working out and eating healthy, heading to TikTok in my downtime to watch videos on what I was interested in. I swiped through video after video of influencers showing me what I should be eating to achieve the perfect body.

Before I knew it, my For You Page was filled with food rules that I willingly followed. I didn’t allow myself to eat bread; I couldn’t eat the yolk of an egg because it was too high in fat; cheese and cream were the things that-shall-not-be-named; and if the last girl I watched on TikTok skipped breakfast then why shouldn’t I? I had fallen victim to the TikTok algorithm.

“‘What I eat in a day’ videos, particularly when curated to appear as an ‘ideal’ way of living, can be interpreted as ‘this is how you should eat’ videos, explains Kerrie Jones, CEO of eating disorder treatment service, Orri.

“Content creators can appear to be in a position of authority when sharing a ‘What I eat in a day’ video, yet be promoting an unhealthy – and often very restrictive – relationship to food,” Jones says. “This type of content can exacerbate someone’s existing eating disorder symptoms – keeping them trapped in the cycle of their illness.”

And that was certainly the case for me – these videos were inescapable after all. Did I know that they were doing more harm than good? Sure. Did I care? No. I was eating cauliflower rice and lettuce because it was the lowest calorie option that would fill my stomach, water was the only ‘safe’ drink because it had zero calories, and chewing gum carved away extra cravings between meals. At my lowest point I was losing up to two pounds a week and sometimes eating 900 calories a day.

My eating disorder served as what Jones refers to as a “maladaptive coping mechanism”; losing weight by the methods suggested to me on TikTok provided me with a sense of control and self-worth.

This was a self-worth that the algorithm had slowly introduced to me, one derived exclusively from appearance, body shape, and weight. After all, the algorithm is designed to keep you hooked: linger too long on a video and TikTok will be lining up similar content in seconds.

I’m not joking.

Research from the Centre of Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) showed just how quickly harmful content is promoted to teen accounts on TikTok. It found that the standard teen user was served videos related to mental health and body image every 39 seconds over a 30 minute period on a user’s For You Page.

Without monitoring the content or tightening regulations on user’s For Your Pages, the algorithm exposing people to harmful content when they’re not even actively looking for it, explains Jones.

“We have a responsibility, as a society, to take action against content we deem harmful, with a recognition of the fact that we cannot control how someone may interpret an image or a 60-second video,” she says.

For me, this responsibility was to myself. I’d gone from a happy 19-year-old with a bubbly personality and a size-10 in clothing; to a miserable, 21-year old wearing a size-4 pair of jeans that still had to be held up by a belt. I was a walking skeleton, experiencing numbness in my hands and feet and my hair coming out in handfuls due to malnutrition. I didn’t see recovery as possible with TikTok’s For You Page in the picture; the only way forward was to delete the app.

And I’m not alone.

In 2022, Beat conducted a survey of 255 people with experiences of eating disorders: 75 per cent selected TikTok as the social media platform that was most harmful due to its algorithmic design and the lack of control users have over the content they see.

When I eventually reintroduced TikTok, it took months of actively swiping away from weight loss or food-related videos the second they appeared to finally transform my For You Page into a safe place to consume content again. I have trained my brain to view these videos as what they truly are: harmful.

Would I consider myself recovered? Pretty much. Before, I could spend hours watching videos that began with a glass of water and a few grapes, convincing myself that that was all my body needed. Now…give me all the cute dog videos you’ve got.