Around 2023, a worrying new trend emerged on TikTok, the favorite social network for 18-25 year-olds. Called #SkinnyTok, it promotes extreme thinness through videos of drastic diets, highly restrictive eating routines, and tips for losing weight quickly. The clips most often feature dangerously thin young women, retouched with filters.
The trend gained momentum last year, becoming the subject of more than 500,000 videos. The hashtag has accumulated more than 520 million views, with approximately 41.8 million likes and 1.9 billion impressions. The hashtag was quickly accused of reinforcing toxic body norms and leading to an explosion of eating disorders among young people, who are massively present on TikTok. The French government has finally addressed the issue. Digital Minister Clara Chappaz asked ByteDance, TikTok's parent company, to remove #SkinnyTok from its platform. After weeks of legal proceedings and "numerous discussions with those responsible," she obtained the hashtag's exclusion. From now on, all Internet users who search #SkinnyTok will come across a message of support. This encourages those affected to seek help if they are struggling with diet, exercise, or body image. The Minister of Digital Affairs congratulates herself on this "first collective victory" and reiterates her intention to ban social media for minors under 15.
Despite TikTok's moderation efforts, harmful videos highlighting thinness continue to proliferate. To avoid the ban, the videos are grouped under other hashtags, including misspelled variations of #SkinnyTok. Clearly, the toxic videos are still online. Some content remains accessible by simply searching for the word "skinny." Clara Chappaz seems aware of this and indicates that "it's a small step, it's not enough, but it shows that we won't give up."
Note that other networks have taken similar measures against the trend. On Instagram, searching for the word "skinny" first displays a help page. However, it only takes one click to ignore it and access toxic content.
Social networks in the government's sights
At the same time, the Minister for Gender Equality, Aurore Bergé, has summoned the heads of Meta, Snapchat, TikTok, Twitch, YouTube, and X. She is asking the social networks to determine "how many offenses" a user must commit to "be banned" from each site.
The minister wants to prevent individuals excluded from a network, especially "particularly problematic accounts, followed by millions and millions of people", from being able to register on another platform. For the moment, each platform applies its own rules and has its own tolerance thresholds. Aurore Bergé is asking that the networks work "in a much more coordinated manner."
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