Toxic TikTok Trends

By Izzy Smith, Devon Luce, and Swastik Siwakoti

You open TikTok and start scrolling through your “For You Page.” All you see are perfect girls with flawless hair, faces, and bodies. Before you know it, your thoughts are flooded with self-hatred and anxiety. These girls fit perfectly into the westernized idea of beauty, and you can’t help but compare yourself to how they look. This is something that many students experience on a daily basis, and they are slowly starting to realize how addictive and harmful TikTok can really be.

“There’s a lot of body checking on TikTok,” said senior Iman Khan. Body checking is the obsessive urge to seek information on your appearance, weight, size, often done through videos or images. Another user, senior Sophia Vitek, said, “Once you’re on TikTok, it’s really hard to get off of it, which is really toxic.”

With TikTok becoming more and more popular, there has been a prevalent rise in toxic trends, specifically ones that touch on fatphobia and eating disorders. 

For the full story, see The Cougar on Medium.