TikTok and eating disorders: why I'm taking a break from my favourite time-waster

The app already faced backlash in early 2020 for its insufficient policing of eating disorder content Content Warning: This article deals with eating disorders as well as other forms of mental illness.  Ice-blonde women with a seemingly endless reserve of bell peppers and cream cheese, who shudder at the very thought of carbs – keto is their gospel, and TikTok their church. “What I Ate Today” diatribes over jangly royalty-free guitar – iced coffee, iced coffee, and iced coffee. Tropical protein shakes, a grimace from the young twenty-something as she chokes them down, perfect smiles for the camera, a thumbs-up and a promise of accountability to drink the lukewarm meal supplements every single day. A buzzing swarm of comments thanking her for her service, her proof of recovery. Deeply unsustainable fitness regimens. “Thinspo” masked as fashion content; as lifestyle “routine” videos; as body positivity. Take the above, and put it on an endless repeat. You now have what my personal TikTok feed has looked like for most of 2020.  I’m not proud of how easily I was captured by this corner of the popular video-sharing app; as someone in active recovery from my own eating disorder, I know that content…
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