TikTok Just Blocked Search Results for ‘SkinnyTok’

Remember the days of social media, when it was about 2 AM musings on whether bagels should be toasted (they should not) or whether Die Hard is a Christmas movie (it is)? Who’d have thought that so quickly it’d become a tool for pressuring people into eating disorders?

And yet that’s exactly what a subset of TikTok has become. As VICE’s own Paige Gawley wrote on April 11, “Creators use tough love style phrases to promote unhealthy beauty and weight standards. When you search ‘SkinnyTok’ on TikTok, you’re first greeted with a message from the app that promises ‘You are more than your weight.’ The app also links resources to help those struggling.”

It wasn’t enough to allay the concerns of European regulators, who’ve slammed the app as not doing enough. As Gawley pointed out in her criticism of how gutless these sorts of easily ignored messages tend to be, she followed up by writing, “However, navigate out of that well-intentioned message and you’re bombarded with other videos that try to show you that you, in fact, are not more than your weight.”

Now, SkinnyTok has been banished entirely from the search results within TikTok’s app “since it has become linked to unhealthy weight loss content,” as reported by the BBC.

skinnytok’s opponents declare victory

As Clara Chappaz, France’s Minister of State for Digital Affairs and one of the key European politicians pushing for TikTok to do something about SkinnyTok, posted on X on June 1, “Skinnytok is OVER!

“On April 18th I captured the @Arcom_fr and @EU_Commission from the tens of thousands of contents promoting extreme thinness on @Tiktok under the hashtag #skinnytok . Nearly 35,000 of you shared your indignation through the petition by Charlyne Buigues, a nurse specializing in eating disorders, whom I received at Bercy on May 2 with the deputy @ArthurDelaporte who is leading the commission of inquiry on @tiktok with @Laure_Miller.

“My extensive discussions with TikTok officials led me to their Center for Transparency and Accountability in Dublin on May 8 to demand significant changes. Today, @tiktok just confirmed to me that it has finally removed this unacceptable hashtag from its platform. This is a first collective victory. I salute it.

“However, the fight to protect our children online doesn’t stop there. And I won’t give up. Banning social media before 15 (years of age) is my priority.”

Well, I don’t know about the latter part. But whether this move by TikTok will lessen the damage done to users through exposure to weight loss pressure, we’ll have to see how it goes.