Abstract:

This essay discusses how TikTok has affected the mental health of young females by creating unrealistic beauty and lifestyle standards. The essay highlights the prevalence of social media in young people’s lives, the impact of social comparison and influencer posts on anxiety and the harmful effects of TikTok trends that promote unrealistic ideas of body image and lifestyles. The algorithm is also discussed as a factor that contributes to anxiety by continuously showing content that promotes the “perfect beauty standard” and creates a cycle of seeking validation from the app. Through a mix of both theoretical and primary evidence found from many interviews and reports this essay emphasizes the negative impact that TikTok has on young females’ anxiety and mental health.

Conference Paper:

TikTok has largely affected young females’ anxiety and self-confidence by creating unrealistic beauty and lifestyle standards. Social media is prevalent in most young people’s lives, it is used for everything and anything. TikTok is one of the most popular current social media sites for people aged between 18-24 years old, with 54% of users being female (Aslam, 2023). As social media is incorporated so much in young females lives, it can affect people in both good and bad ways, but it can become a cause for concern when things such as mental health are affected. Influencer posts, day in the life vlogs and other common videos on TikTok can heighten anxiety, especially in young females. Generally females have a higher prevalence of anxiety than males (Sha & Dong, 2021), which means they are at more risk of being impacted by social media in negative ways.

 

Young females, specifically teens aged between 18-24, are more likely to be affected and influenced by social media as they are trying to create social connections and establish their own identity at this age, and sites such as TikTok offer young people the ability to do so (Zheluk et al., 2022). However, TikTok can also generate false ideas of body image, lifestyle etc. which can cause mental health issues, like anxiety, to increase. Social comparison is a big issue that is seen on social media, specifically TikTok. On TikTok, many influencers promote a body type or image that is seen as “perfect” which leads to many women feeling unhappy with how they look as it is not the same as people we see online. Although some creators do not outright promote these “perfect” beauty standards, for females, this is being skinny with an hour glass figure, they may share content such as workout routines, “what I eat in a day”, dieting tips or even just posting a video of themselves, which all can impact how young women on the app see themselves. After seeing these videos and images, females may feel pressure to conform to the unrealistic beauty standards and when they cannot reach them, it causes them to feel imperfect, creating a negative body image of themselves which leads to issues such as anxiety. When posting online, you are able to make yourself look the best through filters and editing, people may have had cosmetic procedures to make their lips look bigger or have no wrinkles which helped them to achieve the “perfect” beauty standard that TikTok can promote, however young women looking at these videos and posts may have no idea the influencer looks nothing like this in real life. By not disclosing this information, it creates false advertisement of what women are supposed to look like naturally, which adds pressure onto young females to look a certain way.

 

TikTok trends are also extremely harmful to young females’ mental health as they can promote toxic culture on the app. Many popular trends on TikTok are related to body image and although it may not be obvious, they encourage toxic behaviors for women which result in anxiety issues and self-confidence issues. For example, the ‘What I Eat in a Day’ trend encourages unhealthy or restricted food intake and promotes unsustainable diets, and the trend of posting workout routines promotes unrealistic excursive goals to get slimmer (e.g. abs in 1 week) (Korbani & LaBrie, 2021). These trends create unrealistic ideas of how women’s lives should be, and when females see these videos realizing, they don’t work-out every day and don’t eat a specific diet, they become unhappy with themselves and feel anxious that they aren’t living their lives “correctly”. Toxic beauty trends on TikTok can also affect how women see themselves and cause them to feel anxious about their own looks. Unlike Instagram, where seeing unrealistic photos and edited images of celebrities is how females self-image is negatively affected. TikTok is seen as an app where any “normal” person can be seen and can encourage trends that affect beauty standards (MacLean, 2021). One trend involved showing off your side profiles, although it didn’t specifically start as a toxic trend, the comments on women’s posts of their side profiles became extremely toxic (MacLean, 2021) and created an unhealthy environment for young women, leading to people feeling anxious about their facial structure and how they are seen by others. The anonymity of the internet allows for toxic comments and behavior to go unchecked, further encouraging these trends to continue.

 

The algorithm on TikTok can also affects women’s anxiety as they can never get away from these negative videos. Once you like a video or save it, the algorithm thinks that is what you want to see and continues to constantly show this content. The algorithm also shows content that is popular or trending, even if you haven’t liked the video before, which enables women to be exposed to the toxic trends and influencers that promote the “perfect beauty standard”. Algorithms also reward users for engagement, giving them comments and likes on their own posts, which can create a cycle of seeking validation from the app and when it doesn’t happen it can cause people to lack self-confidence as they aren’t receiving the positive feedback that they have been trying hard to get. The algorithm is designed to keep users engaged by continuously showing content that it predicts will be relevant to them (Ashbridge, 2022). This can lead to something called “doomscrolling” which is where users become addicted to scrolling through their feed for hours on end (Watts, 2020). This can lead to users not sleeping, exercising, or just not getting off their phones, which can cause mental health issues like anxiety as people don’t have the ability to not be on their phones for a long period of time. TikTok can also promote content that is harmful and triggering for others that struggle with different issues. These posts can then decrease people’s mental health and make it more difficult for them to manage their issues. According to The Guardian, ““The platform spirit of TikTok seems to be about posting very loudly about very intimate and intense things… And people are encouraged to be vulnerable to fit that spirit.” This has given a rise to viral videos using a wry, ironic tone to share often devastating personal stories.” (Paul, 2022). For example, a women posted a video dancing using upbeat music and lights with the caption saying “Things my ex-boyfriend said to be as I held my lifeless babies”, many more videos like these became popular, some with over 3.5 million views (Paul, 2022). Videos like these can affect females that use TikTok and can trigger many of their past issues causing them to feel anxious and upset. The algorithm encourages these videos to go around as they have a high like and view count, and because of this it is more common for them to pop up on your For You page, therefore people can’t get away from them.

 

Although there are many influencers who can contribute to peoples increase in anxiety, it can also be seen the other way around. When you post on TikTok you can either get a good reaction or a bad one. Cyberbullying is unfortunately an extremely common thing on all social media sites but there has been a large increase of this seen on TikTok. The app allows anyone to have the ability to view your posts and send you messages which could be a reason as to why bullying has become so prominent. According to the ABC7 “No one knows why there is so much bullying on TikTok, but it sort of lends itself to it, in part because it’s the popular spot to go… people don’t have to be directly connected for the most part, so there is an opportunity to go react to, engage with or bully people.” (Munoz, 2019). When scrolling on the TikTok “For You” page, it can be common to come across videos that have a large amount of hate in the comments, one comment of hate can turn into thousands of people agreeing with them in a matter one minutes due to the easy access of liking a comment. It is easy and accessible to create fake accounts on TikTok, this can increase the amount of hate comments and toxic behavior that is seen on the app which in turn can affect women’s mental health. In an interview on Youthopia a 17 year-old girl stated she was extremely affected mentally by the comments she was receiving on her posts and what got to her was how the comments received plenty of likes – to her it felt like those comments were validated by others because of the amount of likes on them (Na, 2020). When seeing negative comments and harassment on your posts, it can affect people mentally and can create anxiety and feelings of distress. These negative comments are also commonly seen on females’ posts, specifically when things such as body image are involved. Another young female, aged 19, was interviewed by Youthopia and stated that it is normal to be harassed on TikTok, however one incident stood out to her most, when she was fat-shamed after posting a video of her dancing and it was made worse when another influencer decided to join in. she said what particularly distressed her was that “no one stood up for her and were liking the body-shaming comments instead” (Na, 2020). These comments can lead to serious mental health issues as they make women feel so unhappy with their own bodies. As well as the person who made the video being affected by the bullying, other women who come across the post and see the comments can feel upset and anxious. For example, if someone is being shamed for the way their body looks, another woman may come across the video and think that they have a similar body type to the girl in the TikTok, she will then open the comments to see hate towards the way the girl looks, ultimately making her feel as if she is being bullied too, which can lead to feelings of anxiety about her own body and posting on TikTok as she doesn’t want the same thing to happen to her.

 

Due to social media always being prevalent in our lives, it can cause many mental health issues such as anxiety, self-confidence decrease and depression. TikTok is an app that has had a significant impact on young females’ anxiety and self-confidence since the app has been created. While social media can be a positive tool for connection and self-expression, many platforms such as TikTok can also promote negative things such as unrealistic beauty and lifestyle standards as well as generating false ideas of body image through posts and trends, all of which can be detrimental to young women’s mental health. The TikTok algorithm can also affect users’ anxiety and self-confidence by continuously showing content that reinforces toxic trends and creates addiction to the app causing users to seek validation from TikTok, which can also lead to mental issues such as anxiety.

 

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