Skip to Content, Navigation, or Footer.
Support the IDS in College Media Madness! Donate here March 24 - April 8.
Friday, March 29
The Indiana Daily Student

arts

COLUMN: TikTok encourages body-shaming

Enttoxictiktoktrends042020

Maybe you finally caved and downloaded TikTok out of quarantine-induced boredom, like I did. Maybe you quickly realized that you had been missing out on hours of brainless, exquisite entertainment. Maybe you even learned a few of the dances, tried some of the workout challenges and hear audio trends such as the "True Jackson VP" theme song blasting in your brain as you fall asleep at night.

And maybe after a while, you slowly started noticing all of the deeply upsetting aspects of the app you are now addicted to. 

If you’re anything like me, all of the above apply. But if you haven’t quite gotten around to that last realization yet, allow me to bring TikTok’s body shaming culture to your attention.

First of all, there are videos that outright promote eating disorders. Some people use audio trends to joke about not eating for days or chugging apple cider vinegar to lose weight. While self-expression can be a way to cope, it doesn’t justify posting videos that reach millions of young people and encourage blatantly dangerous behaviors.

Not far behind those TikToks are eating disorder videos which masquerade as health and fitness tips. Users will show off their dangerously low calorie intakes through “what I eat in a day” videos and push over-exhausting workout routines onto their followers, feeding relentlessly into the idea that skinniness is a necessity.

TikTok also offers a duet feature, where users can make a video that appears next to someone else’s. I’ve seen people use it to duet skinny girls and say that they plan on not eating until they’re just as thin. I’ve also seen people use it to mock the appearance of the person they’re duetting with. 

What’s worse is that on other apps, such as Instagram, you can just unfollow accounts that make you feel bad about yourself. TikTok, on the other hand, is designed to show you content regardless of who you follow, meaning that any of these videos can show up on your For You Page without warning.

But none of that comes close to how brutal the comment section on any given TikTok is. For any video featuring a girl who isn’t shaped like an hourglass or whose face doesn’t meet our current societal standards of beauty, it’s almost guaranteed that the comments will be a cesspool of cyber-bullying.

It’s ruthless. Every day I see people compared to animals or told point-blank they should starve. 

To the app’s credit, there’s a lot of positive content to go around. There is no shortage of feel-good family collaborations, teachers bonding with their students and, of course, the videos with that specific type of humor that radiates Vine energy.

The problem is that there’s also no shortage of content that contributes to the network of body negativity. In fact, it was revealed that TikTok censored content made by creators they deemed as ugly to attract more users, according to Entrepreneur magazine. 

I’m certainly not going to stop annihilating all of my free time by scrolling through TikTok, no matter how horrendous some of the videos and comments are. We can’t make TikTok change its algorithm, but we can stay critical of what we’re viewing and try not to internalize toxic messages that reach us through our phone screens. 

I’m going to do my best to stop fueling problematic trends, and I invite you to do the same. Although it's impossible to control which videos appear in your For You Page, you can control how long you view them and how much you interact with them. The less engagement a video gets, the less likely it is to reach others. 

And if you’re feeling brave, maybe even stand up for the girl who just wanted to make a funny video whose comment section only seems to care about the size of her nose. We might know that TikTok culture doesn’t determine our beauty, but someone needs to tell her too.

Get stories like this in your inbox
Subscribe