"SkinnyTok" and the Evolution of Disordered Eating in the Digital Age

TikTok is everywhere—between classes, during study breaks, while commuting, eating, or falling asleep. It's where people go to learn recipes, find outfit ideas, and laugh at relatable content. However, not all corners of TikTok are as harmless. One especially toxic subset of TikTok is “SkinnyTok”—a side of the platform that glamorizes extreme thinness and disordered eating behaviors under the mask of wellness and fitness content. This new trend is affecting teenagers, adults, and even preteens across the world. SkinnyTok isn’t just toxic; it reflects deeper societal issues around beauty, control, and technology that demand broader public and political scrutiny.

What Is “SkinnyTok”?

SkinnyTok is a trend on TikTok where content creators post videos encouraging low-calorie diets, obsessive calorie counting, extreme fitness routines, and glorified starvation tactics. While many videos within this trend are framed as “health journeys,” they often reinforce a message that being thin equals being valuable. “What I Eat in a Day” videos frequently showcase meals totaling fewer than 1,000 calories—far below what is considered healthy, especially for young adults. Others show influencers skipping meals, drinking only coffee until dinner, or pushing viewers toward fasting as a weight-loss “hack.”

Visually, these videos often look soft and inviting—filmed with aesthetic lighting, calming music, and wellness buzzwords like “detox,” “glow-up,” or “clean eating.” However, the content of these videos promotes behaviors associated with clinical eating disorders like anorexia. Starving the body of necessary nutrients can result in slowed metabolism, hormone imbalance, brittle bones, fatigue, hair loss, and in extreme cases, cardiac arrest. The visual appeal hides just how medically dangerous these behaviors are.

Influencers, Virality, and Harm

Creators like Liv Schmidt and Mina Zalie have gained millions of views for their so-called wellness journeys. Schmidt frequently posted videos about entering a calorie deficit, tracking every bite of food, and doing intense cardio multiple times per day. One video, which reached over a million views before her account was removed, detailed an estimated daily calorie intake of around 800 calories. Her TikTok bio once read, “it’s not a sin to want to be thin”, and she regularly described gaining weight as her “worst nightmare.” While Mina Zalie often promotes healthy recipes and encourages daily movement, her content regularly features body-check videos and emphasizes small portion sizes—implying that control and thinness are markers of success. One of her most viral quotes, 'If you want to be small, you eat small. If you want to be big, you eat big,” encapsulates this mindset, equating food restriction with personal worth and discipline.

These influencers build parasocial relationships with followers, as viewers trust them not just for advice, but for guidance on shaping their self-image. The rise of user-generated ED content, often coded with hashtags like #fitspo or #thatgirl, marks a cultural shift. Now, disordered eating is no longer just sold by corporations: it is sold peer-to-peer. Unlike the calorie-tracking magazines and weight-loss ads of the 90s and 2000s, today’s harmful messages are coming from people who look, act, and sound like us. This makes them harder to critique—and easier to internalize.

Why do these influencers gain so much popularity in the first place? Their content feeds into aspirational ideals—like control, success, and desirability—in a society that often links discipline with self-worth. TikTok’s algorithm amplifies this by rewarding videos that get engagement, and videos focused on bodies, dramatic transformations, or extreme habits tend to go viral quickly. Even when these accounts are eventually removed, the harmful trends they spark continue to spread as other users replicate the content.

TikTok’s Algorithm and the Cycle of Thinness Ideals

One of the most dangerous features of TikTok is its algorithm, as it shows users more of what keeps them watching. A study from the Center for Countering Digital Hate found that TikTok’s algorithm begins pushing eating disorder content within 8 minutes of interacting with fitness or body image videos. Liking or lingering on just a few SkinnyTok posts can create a feedback loop, flooding a user’s “For You Page” with more extreme versions of the same content.

The app doesn't just reflect interests—it deepens them. For young users with low self-esteem or mental health vulnerabilities, this can act like digital quicksand. The line between inspiration and obsession blurs quickly. What starts as a fitness goal becomes a dangerous identity.

A Generational and Political Issue

This issue is not new. The glorification of thinness has evolved from 90s heroin-chic models to early 2000s diet culture, to Tumblr-era "thinspo" (thin inspiration) blogs in the 2010s. In each wave, societal pressure on women’s bodies has adapted to the dominant technology of the time. In the late 20th century, large corporations profited from weight-loss pills, detox teas, and restrictive meal plans. Today, it's individuals—peers, influencers—capitalizing on thinness for views, brand deals, and social status.

This shift reveals something about our evolving expectations around beauty and power, especially for women. Thinness has long been treated as a symbol of discipline, self-control, and worth. As social media puts the spotlight on individuals rather than companies, the expectation to maintain perfection has become a personal burden rather than a corporate advertisement. Society no longer just markets thinness—it depends on individuals to perpetuate it.

What’s at Stake?

Eating disorders are not rare, and they are not harmless. They have the highest mortality rate of any mental illness. According to the National Eating Disorders Association, over 28 million Americans will suffer from an eating disorder in their lifetime. Among those affected, suicide and severe medical complications are tragically common. Social media content that glamorizes disordered behavior makes recovery harder and often prevents people from recognizing they need help at all.

A 2022 report by FHE Health showed that 87% of women and 65% of men compare their bodies to people they see on social media, with a significant number reporting increased body dissatisfaction and shame. This isn’t a matter of personal insecurity—it’s a public health crisis.

Rethinking the Conversation

Rather than offering vague tips like “use media literacy” or “report harmful videos,” we need to ask harder questions. What does it say about our culture that we idolize under-eating as self-discipline? Why does society allow tech companies like TikTok to profit from mental illness while claiming neutrality? Why do we consistently place the responsibility on individuals to resist systemic harm?

Fighting this issue means not just telling people to “love their bodies” but dismantling the systems that tell them not to. It means holding platforms accountable for their algorithms, pressuring policymakers to regulate digital health misinformation, and creating media environments where diverse bodies are not just included—but valued.

Final Thoughts: The Problem Is Bigger Than TikTok

SkinnyTok is just the latest face of a decades-long war on the body. It reflects how far we still have to go in separating health from thinness, and worth from appearance. Today’s generation is growing up with the message that being desirable means being small, quiet, and controlled—and that message is echoed with every scroll.

We must move beyond reaction and toward prevention. This means education, representation, policy, and digital reform. But most of all, it means changing the conversation—from one about what bodies should look like to what they can do, feel, and be. Thinness is not health; hunger is not beauty; this is not just a trend—it’s a crisis we cannot afford to ignore.