Scrolling through TikTok's For You page one night, Lily was shown videos of people eating ice chips, sleeping all day to avoid eating, and fasting for days.



The San Francisco-based teen had previously lived with an eating disorder, and she found this content triggering.

She took to the r/EDAnonymous subreddit to share her frustrations. "Has anyone else noticed how proana TikTok is becoming?" she wrote, referring to the eating disorder videos (proana = pro anorexia) that she had been shown.

Some people chimed in with their own experiences of seeing proana content, while others spoke positively about seeing eating disorder recovery videos. Almost all of them agreed on one thing: content about eating disorders is all over TikTok.

The app's community guidelines ban videos that "promote eating habits that are likely to cause health issues", specifying pro-anorexia content or that which encourages dangerous weight loss behaviours. Yet videos that show people uncritically displaying or joking about these behaviours are rife.

Users and experts say the platform's visual nature and algorithm have created an environment that can be particularly harmful, particularly for those who have eating disorders.

TikTok's For You page is a limitless feed of videos recommended by an opaque algorithm based on the user's interactions. What separates For You from Instagram or Twitter's main feeds is that the algorithm will serve videos from anyone on the platform, and not just accounts followed by the user.

This means people can be surprised with videos about eating disorders even if they are deliberately not following anyone who regularly posts about such disorders, or about weight loss or diets.

Anecdotal evidence from users says TikTok's For You Page increasingly shows content about eating disorders after they watch just one video on the topic.

This was Lily's experience. She also noticed a feedback loop between the videos of people trying to lose weight and her own eating disorder: the more she saw, the more she was served, the more she watched.

"The nature of any [eating disorder] is just very competitive," Lily said to BuzzFeed News in a message. "You always want to be the skinniest, you always want to lose even more weight, you're always comparing yourself."

By searching basic terms about weight loss or calories, BuzzFeed News was able to easily find accounts promoting dangerous diets and weight loss goals to their followers.

