'Extreme diet videos on TikTok cause eating disorders among young people': investigation by The Wall Street Journal raises alarm

©Christian Chen via Unsplash

Videos about 'dieting' and 'losing weight' on TikTok are said to fuel eating disorders among young users. That is the conclusion of a disturbing investigation by The Wall Street Journal into the extreme challenges many teenage girls submit to in order to lose weight until they are skinny, contributing to the further spread of the social scourge of eating disorders. The journalists created about a hundred fake accounts that used the Chinese app at random, with minimal human intervention, in order to mimic children's behavior.

After spending some time watching videos about alcohol, gambling and weight loss (which were not filtered by the platform), TikTok's algorithm adjusted accordingly. In the For You section, the number and frequency of videos about dieting and weight loss increased steadily.

The results of the study

By the end of the experiment, the artificial intelligence had watched a total of about 255,000 videos. In 32,700 of these, the description or metadata matched a list of hundreds of keywords related to weight loss. 11,615 videos contained textual descriptions with keywords relevant to eating disorders, while 4,402 videos contained a combination of keywords that supported the normalization of eating disorders.

And that wasn't all: to avoid having their videos flagged by the platform, some creators used 'disguised' spellings for keywords about eating disorders - by replacing a letter with a number or an asterisk, for example.

In response to the investigative article, TikTok announced that it's working on new ways for users to safely use the platform and the content on it. The idea is to develop a strategy to recognize videos that may not directly violate TikTok policy, but could be harmful if viewed excessively often. Also under consideration is a tool that would allow users (or parents, if in the case of minors) to prevent videos with certain words or hashtags from appearing in the For You section.

"While the WSJ's experiment does not reflect what most people experience on TikTok, even one person who does have that experience is one too many," said a TikTok spokesperson. "We allow educational or recovery-oriented content because we understand that it can show people that there is hope, but content that promotes, normalizes or glorifies an upset diet is prohibited."

TikTok is not the first social platform to come under fire for its negative impact on users - especially the youngest. Another study, again conducted by the WSJ, showed that Instagram could seriously harm the mental health of teens and contribute to undermining girls' self-esteem and self-worth.

In response to that research, the platform announced the introduction of a feature that takes young people away from potentially harmful content, as well as the 'Take a Break' feature to encourage users to close the app once they have spent a certain amount of time on the platform (10, 20 or 30 minutes).

(©TikTok / The Wall Street Journal via GreenMe.it 2026 / Managing Editor: Selma Keshkire - The Press Junction / Picture: ©Christian Chen via Unsplash)