RAMIFICATIONS OF APPEARANCE-BASED CONTENT ON TIKTOK: HOW DAMAGING IS ONLINE ACCESS TO TEENAGE AND PRETEEN GIRLS?

by

Tallulah Hawley

Undergraduate Thesis

Department of Sociology

University of Oxford

Sarah Lawrence Exchange Program

Supervisor: Amanda Palmer

June 2024

INTRODUCTION:

Social media serves as a way to connect individuals with long-distance friends and family. It creates spaces of community, and encourages socialization with those who one may not have the opportunity to meet in real life. For teenagers, social media has become a space for fostering self-expression — a private sphere where one is able to talk about their problems with friends, be creative, and navigate their own life, all without the parental gaze. 

Despite the positive guise of making connections and providing areas for self-exploration, social media usage has also been shown to increase one’s risk of being cyberbullied (Naslund, Bondre, Torus, Aschbrenner, 2021), to develop feelings of negative self-image (Holland, Tiggeman, 2016), and to reinforce seclusionary behaviors (Elsayed, 2021). One of the most documented symptoms of social media usage over time has been shown through the cycle of overconsuming content, which leads to poor sleep patterns, which leads to negative shifts in behavior, which may lead to symptoms of depression, anxiety, or suicidality (Kelly, Zilanawala, Booker, Sacker, 2019). Social media did not rise in popularity as a result of its negative aspects. However, image-based social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok could argue a different story. 

TikTok is a Chinese-based video platform that launched worldwide in 2018. Pew Research Center states that 93 percent of American people aged 13 to 17 use social media, or have created an account in the past, as of 2023. Of this group, 63% reported using TikTok at least once, with 17% of them describing their usage of the app as “almost constantly”. 46% of teens report using the Internet, in general, “almost constantly”. TikTok is well known for its sleek algorithm, in which the ‘For You’ page keeps track of how long a user spends looking at certain topics, then offers up related or dissimilar content judging from the user’s interactions. Unlike other social media platforms, TikTok shows new content based on prior engagement rather than follower count or popularity of the videos. That way, anyone can ‘go viral,’ and videos with only a few likes or views can be shown on a user’s ‘For You’ page. TikTok began as a video-only application, but has since allowed users to post photos in the form of image carousels, which they may then enhance with their own audio or music.

TikTok’s community guidelines state that a user must be over the age of 12 in order to create an account. In early adolescence, the young brain is still developing, learning wrong from right. This age is also when many individuals begin to curate their own identity, finally realizing for themselves that they are no longer (young) children. The United States Surgeon General Vivek Murthy writes that due to their still-developing brain:

adolescents may experience heightened emotional sensitivity to the communicative and interactive nature of social media. Adolescent social media use is predictive of a subsequent decrease in life satisfaction for certain developmental stages including for girls 11–13 years old and boys 14–15 years old. Because adolescence is a vulnerable period of brain development, social media exposure during this period warrants additional scrutiny.

During this period, Murthy continues, feelings of self-worth and self-identity are being explored and examined. When coupled with image-based social media platforms, an app that has been presented with the slogan “Make every second count” has instead become a swamp for self-comparison and the creation of a corrupted self-image.

Of course, getting a smartphone that has app-downloading capabilities opens an adolescent to a whole new online world. According to a 2021 report by Common Sense Media, 42 percent of ten-year-olds had a smartphone, while 71 percent of American twelve-year-olds did. In 2015, 19% of children aged 10 and 41% had their own smartphone. It can be assumed that this number has only risen in recent years. When children and young teenagers make their way onto social media for the first time, every post can seem new and exciting. Finally, they have entered a space separate from the gaze of their parents. However, the content in question is not seen through an analytical perspective but instead through their own young and misconstrued concept of trust. A report done by the United Kingdom’s Office of Communications (Ofcom) in 2023 found that “a third of children aged 8-17 (32%) said that they believed all or most of what they saw on social media to be accurate and true”. When young individuals venture onto a site, such as TikTok, where most content is (or feels) unregulated, how are they able to glean the difference between what is accurate or beneficial and what is problematic or false? During the preteen years (11-13), a child begins to sharpen their skills of rationale and morality as their prefrontal cortex is not yet fully formed. At this time, there is disequilibrium between the limbic system and the reward pathway. This may lead to “typical adolescent behavior patterns, including risk-taking” (Konrad, Firk, Uhlhaas, 2013) which may suggest that they are not aware of the harm that can exist within image-based platforms or even of the effect that it may have on themselves when questionable content is pushed to these adolescents. In this dissertation, the researcher will navigate content on TikTok (specifically the matter that has been purposefully pushed by the algorithm instead of being actively sought) and analyze the effect that appearance-related content has on the psyche of young women.

LITERATURE REVIEW:

By the time adolescent women peruse social media platforms, they have already been primed to care about their physical appearance, beginning in their very early years. In a 2024 study, Halim et al explored the relationship between physical attractiveness and children ages three to five. Researchers found that “They tended to equate being a girl, which usually has high personal importance during early childhood, with caring about being pretty and needing to be pretty.” This was much more present in female children than in male children. Even before entering preschool, the concept of beauty persists, as well as being preoccupied with whether one fits into those predetermined boxes or not. Halim et al. also cite that young children see characters such as the Disney Princesses as models of beauty in human form. Tsaousi Evdoxia, in her paper “Girlhood through Film Representation: Reconstructing Spaces and Places for Girls”, adopts the concept of Disney Princesses to the now teenaged girl, unpacking the effects of film media upon young girls and how it leads to the creation of differing aesthetics that young women may align themselves with. Stemming from the well-known tale of Rapunzel, Evdoxia argues that two of its modern-day adaptations seem to have split young women’s perceptions of themselves between two solitary categories—preppy and alternative—which can be formed, through self-exploration, into the third category of the “self-regulated girl”. Even though the stories of Barbie as Rapunzel and Tangled are almost identical in their storyline, the portrayal of the female protagonist splits females into distinct categories, which is done subconsciously. The female viewers, therefore, see the Rapunzel characters as “constructions that girls draw upon in order to construct their own attitudes and behaviors”. Similarly, prior studies have shown that concepts of beauty are pushed onto young girls through the media they consume. Timothy Morris’ You’re Only Young Twice: Children’s Literature and Film breaks down messages of depth found within popular children’s stories such as J.M. Barrie’s 1904 Peter Pan and Francis Hodgson Burnett’s 1911 The Secret Garden. Additionally, he analyzes the deviation between the messages that the adolescent may receive versus the “encode[d] adult desires” that can be found within the same text and are only revealed to the reader once they have matured. Looking back on the 1986 film Peggy Sue Got Married, Morris finds that a female identity is never centered on the present, but always on the prospects of the future and the preparation for it. “People want her [Peggy Sue] to be various things—wife, mother, muse—but they never want her to be a playmate”, writes Morris, “and certainly not always to be a little girl and have fun.” A woman’s (and girl’s) identity, Morris argues, never changes.

But how is beauty, an ever-moving concept, concretely defined? In her article “Looking Good: The Psychology and Biology of Beauty”, Feng Charles examines biological approaches to physical beauty across different eras and cultures. Charles finds that symmetry, as a trait of beauty, exists even across a multitude of species when selecting mates, including humans. In the Western perspective of modern-day beauty standards, males tend to prefer “features often described as ‘baby faced’, that resemble an infant's”, she writes. Further, while physically attractive people are seen as more approachable or successful through societal perceptions, there is truly no difference between someone who is and is not conventionally good-looking. However, Charles writes that physical beauty matters, even when inspirational speakers lean into ‘finding one’s internal beauty’, one’s physical look immediately determines an individual’s reactions and interactions with others. Charles’ findings intersect with those of Alana Papageorgiou, Colleen Fisher, and Donna Cross (2022), as well as Laura Vandenbosch and Steven Eggermont (2012). All three studies find that beauty is created, in the perspective of teenage girls, through a combination of stereotypes and reinforcements of positive feedback. Papageorgiou, Fisher, and Cross (2022) argue that feelings of beauty are further validated when one’s personal value is placed solely on their appearance, noting that it “influenced the types of images they would consider posting of themselves.” Additionally, Vandenbosch and Eggermont (2012) find that early exposure to media that features sexual objectification of young women and girls could lead to feelings of self-objectification. Similarly to Vandenbosch and Eggermont, Johanna M. F. van Oosten’s 2020 research “Adolescent girls’ use of social media for challenging sexualization” also reveals the hypersexualization that is present within everyday social media interactions and content. Sexual objectification is prevalent on social media, and exists beyond the motivating value of purely receiving ‘likes’ on posted media. Her research is twofold—she explores the sexual or provocative content present on these sites but also the sexualization of its users, where they are seen not as people “with the capacity for independent action and decision making” but instead as objects to be viewed. In conversation with two participants, van Oosten is told that one must actually search for “feminist accounts” and pro-women content on social media, “but it is often still sort of censored in a way”, while sexualized images show up on anyone’s feed without searching for any related concept. Sexualization in the realm of the Internet, especially for young women and girls, can lead to self-objectification and depression, increased by the subconscious comparison to the women seen online. 

This self-objectification and near obsession with physical looks is only exacerbated by modern day media. Victor Strasburger’s 2004 study “Children, adolescents, and the media.: Current problems in pediatric and adolescent health care” highlights the impacts of graphic visuals in American media. The pressures of consumerism, capitalism, and advertising, Strasburger writes, have introduced sexual intercourse, drug usage, and violence to young children at a pace much more rapid than ever before. This is done through movies, television, and even music videos. Strasburger, a pediatrician, notes that he has seen health issues relating to media consumption within his own office, backing up his research claims. He also analyzes the constraint that magazine layouts and movie stars have placed on young, still physically developing, women: “Nearly one third of third-grade girls have tried to lose weight; by sixth grade, this figure reaches 60%.” Further, the constant sight of drug and alcohol use and abuse on television programs has given teens the “idea that smoking makes one sexy, athletic, cool, or macho”. While these adolescents are aware of the health effects that drug abuse may cause, the idea of increasing one’s image and worthiness with just one simple move is too great. Strasburger observes teenagers of the twenty-first century placing their physical looks over their physical health in some cases. In her book, Decoding Women’s Magazines: From Mademoiselle to Ms., Ellen McCracken argues that the media has purposefully skewed women’s perceptions of themselves. McCracken tackles the issues that stem from youth consumption of female-aimed magazines, concluding that through covert advertising and “pseudo-sexual liberation”, women’s insecurities are reinforced “in the service of consumerism”. Further, McCracken argues that the variation that exists within the average magazine stand only further contributes to this segmentation, pitting one group of women against another group of women, or injecting judgement amongst women and their peers. All of this is subtly disguised by what McCracken refers to as a “sympathetic editorial structure”, which paints the writer of the article as a caring friend, when really, the magazine is just attempting to appeal to the reader’s inadequacies in order to further their consumption, and to increase the magazine’s advertising revenue.

It is clear that from the ages of early adolescence to late teenagehood, girls are in crises of identity (McCracken, 1992) (Papageorgiou, Fisher, and Cross, 2022) (van Oosten, 2020) (Vandenbosch, Eggermont, 2012) (Strasburger, 2004), coupled with countless other changes: hormonal, personal, physical, and more. Body discourse is a long-analyzed topic among thinkers in feminist philosophy. Do standards of beauty even exist, and if so, are they achievable? If a woman chooses to conform to the physical standards of beauty, is she obtuse for doing so? As Judith Butler ponders in her 1993 Bodies That Matter, “If gender is not an artifice to be taken on or taken off at will and, hence, not an effect of choice, how are we to understand the constitutive and compelling status of gender norms without falling into the trap of cultural determinism?” The questions of the female gender and what it means to be and look like a woman will forever ebb and swell as they have for hundreds of years. And they will remain unanswered. In her 1990 book The Beauty Myth, Naomi Wolf highlights the Catch-22 that modern women find themselves in. “Solidarity is hardest to find when women learn to see each other as beauties first. The myth urges women to believe that it’s every woman for herself.” She argues that men are primed to value women physically before they are to understand them as similar beings. Therefore, a woman is tasked with presenting herself through her beauty, as her appearance “is considered important because what we say is not.” While many of today’s women notice such disempowerment within their worlds, representation of women purely through images of beauty persists, and continues to be utilized by advertisements, media, and institutions. As young women grow up, they are groomed by such campaigns, inundating them with conceptions of personal beauty through “self-hatred, physical obsessions, terror of aging, and dread of lost control.”

The relationship between preteen-teenage females and their obsession with physical image is no new topic of sociological study. Social media’s rise has furthered this inquiry. In this thesis, the social media application TikTok will be analyzed. TikTok is still a relatively young app — it's only half as old as the age requirement to use it. In September, 2021, TikTok reached one billion active users worldwide. In America, there are around 150 million users, as of March 2023. In comparison to the United Kingdom, no credible user count could be found, but Ofcom reports that 5.2 million users aged 15 to 24 used the app in March 2023. Another Ofcom study observed that 16% of 3- to 4-year-old children in the United Kingdom use TikTok. Between 2018 and 2022, it was the most downloaded app in the world, and now sits at second place to Instagram. Therefore, data and research regarding its effect (especially long-term) has not been studied in detail. In various studies, TikTok has been cited for its allowance of cyberbullying without repercussions (Katie Elson Anderson, 2020) (Ionescu, Licu, 2023). Due to its unusual algorithm, everyday individuals have easily become stars. TikTok is especially unique because of this — well-known celebrities seldom create content on the app. Rather, the platform is carried by everyday individuals, crafting content from their own homes. 

There are many instances in which a user’s entire TikTok page utilizes the ‘lipsync’ feature, where users mouth the words to a song or popular audio clip, therefore mimicking favorite celebrities rather than fashioning an identity separate from those they admire (Montag, Yang, Elhai, 2021). Connecticut-based Charli D’Amelio was the most popular user on the platform for three years straight — she began posting in 2019 at the age of 15 — and she now holds the number two spot in 2024. University of Leicester communications professor Melanie Kennedy refers to D’Amelio as “slim, white, normatively attractive teenage girl (with straight white teeth, long straightened hair and her feminine body frequently displayed via tight fitting crop tops)”. D’Amelio’s lipsync content has taken her far — she has since been on Dancing with the Stars, is currently filming the fourth season of her family’s reality show The D’Amelio Show, boasts her own makeup line, a clothing line, and has modeled for fashion brands. Her success led to many users lipsyncing to D’Amelio’s own audios, creating a cycle of idolization. 

Growing up today, the Internet serves as a guiding tool for personal advancement but simultaneously replaces our connections with family and friends. Watching pornographic material on the Internet without having prior knowledge of sex may immediately skew one’s perception of a real intimate relationship. Scrolling through hours' worth of content of makeup tutorials and beauty routines may launch a young teen who has never worn makeup into painting her full face so that she can match the girls she sees online. What young people learn today, and what messages actually get through, seems to be distilled through the lenient user guidelines of social media.

Targeted algorithms on social media further this distance by delivering media that falls in line with content that they have previously engaged with, encouraging them to “keep people clicking”, writes technological psychologist William Brady. 18th-century social theorist Jeremy Bentham’s concept of the ‘panopticon’ is arguably one of the most well-known adaptations of theories for control once brought into the public eye by French philosopher Michel Foucault. Bentham’s construction places a guard at a large tower in the center of a circular prison, where all cells are visible to the staff member on duty. The inmates are therefore under constant surveillance, while they remain unaware of if the guard is observing them at any given time. In the Digital Age of the twenty-first century, the Internet serves as a platform of constant surveillance, compiling data and disseminating it within the same keystroke. Political science professor Dr. Matthew Stein writes that social media can be applied twofold towards the panoptical theory — the user can be either a guard, viewing any possible social media post at any time without the knowledge of the post’s creator, the user can also be the inmate, with their data and personal information being “permanently visible and whether or not one’s page is being accessed at any given moment is unknown and unknowable”. However, in line with Foucault’s applications of power abuse that the construction subjects the inmates to, the user will never know whether they are within the cell or within the tower, at any given time. The only way to opt out of this situation, Stein notes, is by not making social media accounts in the first place. Foucault’s theory of discipline can be further applied to social media. Unknowingly, consuming mass amounts of a certain sector of media, such as purely body-image content, can distort the user’s self-perception, the content exposure subconsciously leading them towards a warped self-image. Further, an increased use of social media can result in loss of sleep or a lack of in-person socialization. While the overbearing presence of social media and Internet usage in the current day has become accepted and even invited due to its offerings of accessibility and long-distance connection, social media can intoxicate the immature brain, triggering negative self-esteem issues in young women and girls. By calculating individual scores of body image self-discrepancy and internalization of beauty ideals, Chelly Maes and Laura Vandenbosch (2022) find that one’s idealization of skinnier women corresponds positively with an increased usage specifically of the Instagram app. They also highlight that during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, social media usage increased exorbitantly, which has resulted in a normalization of the practices of scrolling and social media usage. In February of 2022, Tiktok updated their community guidelines to strictly ban disordered eating content from the platform, stating, “While we already remove content that promotes eating disorders, we'll start to also remove the promotion of disordered eating.” Despite their vows to remove content that could be seen as ‘symptoms’ of eating disorders, such as extreme exercise, incredibly small portion sizes, or non-religious fasting, it remains open and accessible on the platform. In 2022, the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) published a report on eating disorder content on TikTok. Their data began by creating two false accounts under a 13-year-old’s birthday in the United States, Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom. Their study deals specifically with eating disorder and weight-related content, which they observed with an extreme prevalence in their findings. They found that one of their Vulnerable Teen Accounts, whose username included the term “loseweight”, was recommended harmful videos every 66 seconds. The CCDH Standard Teen Accounts were offered content relating to body image every 39 seconds. CCDH shows that even searching for ‘weight loss’ can lead to a bounty of eating disorder content. 

However, the relevant literature does not offer specifics or details in relation to the online content that is being accessed by adolescent girls. With one billion users and counting, taking into account the interesting algorithm that the site uses as well as the leniency surrounding its cyberbullying guidelines, what content lies in wait to ‘go viral’? 

METHODOLOGY:

This thesis will concern my findings when presenting myself as an adolescent female on social media and, without interacting with any posts, exploring what uninvited content is out there. By choosing to not actively seek out any specific topics, I am instead being presented with content that the algorithm has ‘recommended’ for those similar in age, location, and gender. Current research on social media refrains from including related screenshots or links to content, rather than describing blandly the information that was accessed. By making the research interactive, the investigation is supported by visual examples of the content unearthed. Therefore, the best way to see what TikTok is recommending to young women is to dive into it firsthand. Hence, my first step of this primary research was to set up a purposefully fake profile on TikTok, adjusting my birth date to April 2011, making my account that of a 13 year old female. As I am currently a student in Oxford, England, my TikTok account’s location was set to the United Kingdom. Immediately, I received a pop-up notification that because I was under the age of 16, my account would be automatically set to ‘private.’ I myself am not a TikTok user, so I was learning how to navigate the app in real-time, with the same fresh eyes as a first-time 13-year-old user. I chose to open the app and scroll down the ‘For You’ page of recommended content for a few minutes every day, being aware to not linger on any specific video for too long so as not to overwhelm my feed with specific posts. Originally, this thesis process began as a way to analyze feminine comodification on TikTok through the sphere of visual aesthetics (vanilla girl aesthetic, e-girl, cottagecore) that manifest as physical fashion trends. What stands out about trends on TikTok versus other platforms is how thoroughly they seem to be followed through. As a first-time user, these trends were all that I had heard about from TikTok (as well as the real-life imitation of them). However, as I began my research, what I originally though of as an app for sharing ideas and tutorials had morphed into a lawless realm during only my first ten-minute journey through the For You page.

RESEARCH:

After a week and a half of this process, I was greeted with a video of a 17-year-old blonde girl posing, lipsyncing to a popular song. When showing more popular videos, TikTok offers a suggested search at the top of the comments section, typically consisting of what users searched for directly after viewing that video. I clicked on the comments section of that popular video, and the suggested search was “how to get small ribcage”. I continued to scroll, seeing what I will term ‘neutral content’ for the remainder of the paper: thrifted clothing hauls, makeup tutorials, dances to popular songs. However, three minutes after viewing the ribcage post, I, again new to using TikTok, discovered a new tab at the top of the ‘Home’ page, the ‘Explore’ page. This feature was added in late 2023 and serves the purpose of showing popular content on the platform, which may not relate to the individual user’s algorithm. As this feature is so new, there is not much data showing how comparable this tab is to the ‘Discover’ page, which shows current popular hashtags and is where a user can type in a search bar for other content. My Explore page, upon first glance, was shocking.

Of the first six images that appeared on the Discover page, six were eating disorder-adjacent or -related. When I kept scrolling through this page, more appeared, with titles like “Massive fatty binge edition” and “reality check if you think you’re skinny enough”, a photoslide captioned “what’s the last thing you ate?” on the first image and “nothing” on the second image, and a video of measly portions with a song over the background singing “I know it’s for the better”. These videos did not have many likes, as shown in the images above, but they had view counts in the thousands. TikTok was technically aware of my account’s age, immediately setting it to private, and censoring sensitive content (which was not really sensitive, this content included a girl using scissors to cut her own hair and a woman in a hospital room showing a feeding tube on her stomach). However, the algorithm was not adjusted to account for my user’s young age. I had not searched for specific content, knowingly lingered over, or liked any video thusfar, so there was not much data for the algorithm to learn from. Yet, I was soon bombarded with content relating to eating disorders and shaming of physical and bodily appearances. Three days later, my Explore page was similar.

When scrolling through my For You page as well, the majority of the content seemed to share a negative undertone. Even in a neutral post such as a woman dancing, the comments ranged from mean retorts about her appearance or weight to threats and verbal abuse. Additionally, the comments on more negatively-themed posts, such as a picture of a person’s arm with an IV in it in a hospital room had comments stating “I need to stop but it’s so rewarding seeing the number go down” with 25 likes and “I don’t even wanna be skinny but I feel so much guilt in myself too [sic] eat then the weight I lose makes me lose my appetite too” with 48 likes. 

TikTok also has a live video option, where users can livestream and interact with an audience. Similar to other posted content on the platform, these live videos can arrive on anyone’s page. Some of the live videos on my For You page had fewer than five viewers and were posted from accounts with fewer than 100 followers. One theme within these live videos was labelled as “Beef Live”, which seemed to be a live video with multiple accounts participating at once. Viewers can comment, and anyone can request to join to speak as well. In these Beef Lives, one of the more graphic and unsettling experiences I had was two accounts yelling at each other through their strained phone microphones. One of the people was a 16-year-old female, according to the bio of her account, and the other was a young-sounding girl, whose bio said she was 14 years old, with the sound of a baby crying in the background. The 14-year-old was barely speaking, but the 16-year-old repeatedly cursed and called her a “motherfucking fatass” and similar terms. There were 282 users viewing this video, including me. After this, the live video got age-restricted and I was kicked off. If content becomes age-restricted on TikTok, no one under age 18 is able to view the post, except for the original poster. In this case, the 16-year-old whose inflammatory words caused the content to get restricted would theoretically be allowed to stay on, despite her not being able to view an age-restricted post herself. No less than a minute later, another Beef Live was recommended, this one with 89 current viewers. In this video, two young boys made comments about having sex with each other's mother and then killing her afterwards. This video was not age restricted during my viewing.

An outstanding majority the content on my For You page dealt with physical appearance. It was teeming with makeup tutorials on “how to glow up”, daily routines requiring hundreds of dollars worth of skincare and body products, and pre- and post-plastic surgery comparisons. Even with the TikTok age restriction in place, “how to lose weight quickly workouts”, ‘fatspo’, and ‘body checks’ still seeped through. The amount of appearance-related content was overwhelming.

After two weeks of skimming through my For You page, I began to feel that I had gained insights into how the algorithm was ‘controlled.’ When I would click on someone’s profile or look through the comments, that user’s content would repeatedly appear on my For You page. Despite not interacting with any eating disorder content, it still materialized in my feed. Further, the comments section often reaffirmed the negative views espoused by the gloomy postings. Additionally, if the content had a more positive take, the comments section could be filled with hateful comments. It was difficult to peel the two apart. When gauging what can be termed ‘negative appearance-related content’, it included content ranging from uncensored self-harm scars and pessimistic captions overlaying selfies or aesthetic pictures to eating disorder quotes and ‘get ready with me’ videos where the user complains about her appearance and discusses what she would change. ‘Positive appearance-related content’ included lipsyncs to cheerful songs, makeup tutorials with helpful feedback, and offerings of life hacks and tips for young girls. Determined to see how much of this content was appearance-based, and which side of the negative-positive spectrum it skewed towards, I viewed approximately 300 minute-long videos, looked thru thousands of comments written by others, following the links that were automatically offered to me, and scoring each one. If a negative-skewing video generated comments affirming the negative theme, it would be given one tally in the negative column. If the comments aligned with the theme of a more optimistic video, one tally would go in the positive column. If the content was deemed positive but the comments were bleak or even cruel, then 0.5 would go into the positive column and 0.5 would go into the negative. If the content had nothing to do with appearance, then it would be classified as neutral. All TikTok videos/images out of the 140 viewed were distilled into categories. In my original viewing on the first day of research, all TikToks viewed were able to be classified into one of the ten categories. In the table below, the data found is shown. In the second chart, the neutral category was removed (n=46), leaving 95 TikToks that were appearance-themed.

positive

negative

neutral

skits/pranks/entertainment

1

2

13

live videos

2

8

3

lip sync

6.5

7

11

fitness/wellness

2.5

8.5

photoslide

4.5

10.5

11

makeup/skincare

7

6.5

2

fashion

4.5

2.5

3

life hacks/advice

2

2

grwm/storytime

4

5

3

video clips

2

6

Figure 1.

Table 1

Table 2

In all, 36 out of 140 items of TikTok content were given the positive rendering, while 58 out of 140 were classified as negative (comments section inclusive). The most negatively-skewed categories were ‘photoslide’, where users can upload their own still images, and fitness/wellness, which consisted mostly of harsh workouts, diets, and eating disorder content. The most positively-skewed content was seen within the categories of makeup/skincare, composed mainly of makeup tutorials and ‘get ready with me’ content with the poster speaking constructively, and lipsync (although negative lipsync still outweighed positive lipsync by 0.5), which was mostly young women singing along to a popular song and smiling/being physically happy.  Negative content outweighed positive content in nearly every category but fashion (+1) and life hacks/advice (equal).

An overwhelming percentage of the content was related to physical appearance, body shaming, and agonizing about one's own body. The comments section often commenters piled on or contributed to the negative vibe of body shaming, and it could be argued that it was even encouraging the appearance-driven behaviors. 

The For You page content is generated based on the user’s recently liked videos, so the TikTok algorithm is not able to differentiate safe content from damaging content. If the user has previously ‘liked’ a video or image carousel, TikTok will continue to promote content that is similar. The TikTok community guidelines for mental and behavioral health states:

We want TikTok to be a place where people can boost their self-esteem, without promoting negative social comparisons. We do not allow showing or promoting disordered eating and dangerous weight loss behaviors or facilitating the trade or marketing of weight loss or muscle gain products.

Content is restricted (18 years or older) and ineligible for the FYF [For You feed] if it shows or promotes potentially harmful weight management, or markets products for weight loss or muscle gain. Content is restricted (18 years and older), and ineligible for the FYF in some regions, if it shows cosmetic surgery and does not include risk warnings.

Why then, was my account hurled into a sea of pro-anorexia-themed TikToks without interacting with any related content? In late 2020, TikTok banned many eating disorder-related search terms, however, many search terms remain active. In the images above, my recommended searches (image at left shows what accounts similar to mine have searched, at right shows what I “may like”) included keywords like “why can’t i be pretty” and “at my lowest again”, as well as “trying to stay alive” and “tw [trigger warning] harsh motivation”. One way to get around the community guidelines is to use the hashtag of the username of a popular eating disorder poster, rather than state any keywords that may get flagged. Another option is the frequent use of acronyms. WIEIAD stands for ‘what I eat in a day’, but the term has been warped by pro-ana (pro-anorexia) TikTok as a way to slip through the algorithm. On TikTok, there is no lack of conventionally attractive women. This is furthered by the plethora of face- and body-altering filters that can be attached to any photo or video. When opening the camera, the top 12 trending filters all changed skin tone, either tanning it or making it quite pale, and changed a physical feature, such as adding eyelashes, thinning the nose, or plumping the lips. When a filter is applied to a video, the viewer is not notified. If the viewer is comparing themselves to the users that they see on TikTok, the images of women and girls whom they see may not even be their real selves, but images warped by added filters and facial-feature effects. Image-based social media platforms like TikTok promote physical comparison, especially when coupled with the ability of viewers to add comments. 

Girls in their preteens and early teens are in a time of immense change — intense hormones mingle and escalate emotions and every stressor can feel unbearable. Young girlhood is a time of emotional change as well, as brains and bodies develop, menstruation cycles begin, and personal identities continue to form. When shown TikTok content that is almost wholly related to body image and self-perception, young girls comparing themselves to the women shown onscreen is almost certain to occur. This is further coupled with eating disorder content, normalizing starvation and calorie-counting behavior, and in some cases even self-harm and self-injury. Self-comparison to idealized, manufactured concepts of beauty does not end when one becomes an adult, but due to the priming of these behaviors, especially when young and vulnerable, creates a familiarity with doing so. The CCDH study found that “Within 2.6 minutes, TikTok recommended suicide content. Within 8 minutes, TikTok served content related to eating disorders. Every 39 seconds, TikTok recommended videos about body image and mental health to teens.” This thesis completely replicates their findings, although these findings relate more widely to appearance-based and body image-related content.

ANALYSIS & DISCUSSION:

TikTok is unique from other social media. There is a stark lack of famous people and celebrities on the app. The only famous people I came across were “TikTok famous” in their own right: everyday individuals, setting up their phones in their bedrooms to make videos. In the account of the typical user base, this would include the user’s own friends and people that they know. Instead, the app consists of young people communicating with each other, and being honored and acknowledged in that world is cherished. No matter if the content is positive or negative, it affects the thinking of the user base and affects how they view themselves. While they may not view their friends with the same idolization as they do stars, seeing their acquaintances in the same light as the other TikTok famous people only further contributes to self-comparison. Idolizing ‘normal’ individuals, especially school-aged teens, can be damaging when one adapts their own persona to align with whomever they are idolizing. Further, putting this pressure onto the young adult poster of them becoming a sudden role model to people of an age similar to themselves is a difficult and odd transition. 

The types of content today’s teens are shown on TikTok’s For You pages seems no different from female-targeted magazines. Alicia Silverstone’s July 1995 Seventeen cover includes a headline written on the top of the page, over the Seventeen script, reading “do you hate your body? how to stop”. The second listed headline is “hot stuff: babes on the beach”. Nearly every issue of 1990s-2000s Seventeen includes supportive and body-positive anecdotes and tips while simultaneously endorsing negative body image comparisons only a page later. In July 2012, Seventeen launched their Body Peace Treaty, stemming from an April 2012 change.org petition by Julia Bluhm. Bluhm writes, noting Seventeen’s avid usage of photo alteration, “Girls want to be accepted, appreciated, and liked. And when they don’t fit the criteria, some girls try to “fix” themselves. This can lead to eating disorders, dieting, depression, and low self esteem.” The Body Peace Treaty vows to refrain from using photoshop technology, proclaiming that they will “[n]ever change girls’ body or face shapes. (Never have, never will.)” Of course, their use of photo alternation did not end. Still, in the editions following the launch of the Body Peace Project, their headlines continued to reference striving for a skinnier body, with the following issues promoting “great legs! nice butt! flat abs!” in February 2013 and “flat abs + major confidence (before you hit the beach)” in June 2013. 

While magazines like Seventeen and Teen Vogue remained popular with teenage girls, both publications had ceased regular printing by 2018. Therefore, the same content was widely available online for consumption, but through online-only articles, stripped of the colorful graphics and elaborate typefaces that once graced their printed pages. Image-based social media has seemed to take the place that teen magazines once held in the routine of young women. TikTok takes this a step further, achieving on-demand content that is tailored to the specific individual. Rather than the printed magazine that is read at home, sprawled out on bed after school gets out, TikTok is constantly on-hand and available for use.

While no interviews were concluded in the process of this dissertation’s research, the experiential output under the guise of a thirteen-year-old user shows the understanding and learning in real time that occurs as a young user navigates the app for the first time. As the researcher, herself using the app for the first time, learned the mechanics of TikTok and how to traverse the For You page, her own experience mirrors that of a young individual stepping foot into the social media realm. Through the experiential method, the researcher was engaging hands-on with the presented materials/content. While many researchers have utilized TikTok and similar image-based social medias in their own studies, the inclusion of the images accessed during the duration of the study helps to support its claim. 

In the early 1920s, Max Weber polished the concept of interpretive understandings in sociology, referenced by the German word verstehen. He saw sociology as a vessel in order to understand the meanings of social actions and attempting to learn from the inside of the research, or even as an individual within the phenomena. His definitions coincide with studies of cultural anthropology and its ethnographic research. This thesis was conducted in this method, akin to the ethnographic practice, without disturbing the privacy or intervening with individuals of study but instead through emphasizing with their messages all the while experiencing the app as a new user. There are limitations within this present thesis. This dissertation stands as only the tip of the iceberg — there is a breadth of data and content waiting to be analyzed under the deep sea of image-based social media. Specifically on TikTok, the role of advertisers, the indirect TikTok Shop, and product placement could all use further examination. Further, this research was fascinating and eye-opening to the terrors that exist within the known online world, but it also reveals that a world just as similar exists for teenage and adolescent males. At a societal level, toxic masculinity and ‘alpha male’ culture have both had concerning effects on young boys, and, as the reader has seen, TikTok can obviously further the gendered world, fed to a young user on a constantly-available cycle. If the same study was conducted but instead browsing as a male aged 13, a whole different set of negative messages would be unearthed. While this thesis only focuses on content aimed at young women, males also develop eating disorders. TikTok content normalizes this behavior through posts relating to intense workouts and strict dieting. When showing these concepts to young individuals for the first time, the fact that they are seeing it online and in a space they consider safe, the actions of disordered eating may seem more commonplace and allowed.

Albert Bandura’s 1971 theory of social learning posits that the concept of gender is created through imitating the behavior of adults of the same sex. Applying this to TikTok usage, the young female is able to see women of similar ages and circumstances (also in middle school, lives nearby, et cetera), and may replicate the actions that she sees in their content in order to form herself into what she has seen as what it truly means to be a girl. If she is bombarded with body image-related content, she may internalize the posts and apply it to her own body. Similarly, Bandura’s social cognitive theory (1989), posits that the environment one grows up in directly relates to their learned knowledge. They learn through previously modelled behavior, and develop a sense of agency in order to regulate their own behavior, which in itself is rewarded by positive and negative social cues, which Bandura notes is aggravated by own’s desire to be liked. When individuals see trends or popular content on TikTok, social cognitive theory can theorize that their own actions and behaviors may be influenced by the posts. When a young user is exposed to a constant, on-hand, stream of ‘perfection’ or postings yearning for perfection, they can develop an unhealthy view of their own body and an unrealistic view of ‘normal’ body image expectations. TikTok content viewed by the researcher often holds a thin and beautiful body and face above everything else. What can be even more harmful is the indirectness of the content, such as a young viewer being inundated by conventionally attractive (which often goes hand in hand with skinny and young) posters, even in mundane posts or seconds-long lipsyncs. Further, clips of films or television shows were available on the platform, which often included glam shots of attractive actors. One movie that continued to show on the researcher’s feed was Thirteen (2003). In this movie, thirteen-year-old Tracy becomes friends with the popular girl at her middle school, Evie. Throughout the film’s duration, Tracy transforms from an innocent virgin honors student to a sexually active, drug addicted, theft-committing girl with a tongue piercing who develops anorexia nervosa and cuts herself (self-harms). Her relationship with her mom seems to become irreparably altered as well, going from a close and trusting relationship into screaming matches and seclusion. While the movie itself is very disturbing due to the scenes of grooming and graphic descriptions of abuse, scenes from the movie repeatedly appeared on the For You feed. Thirteen is a tale of peer pressure, and how much someone will change themselves in order to be liked. Bandura’s theory can also be applied here, when Tracy begins acting more hostile when around the aggressive behaviors exhibited by Evie.

TikTok displays beauty ideals for users to view. It can be argued that the preteen and teenage individuals observing the content may have not even been aware of the valuation of beauty before accessing the posts, due to their young ages. During this period of growth, one changes from a child into a young adult/teenager, and begins to see themselves in a different, and more grown, light. TikTok may contribute to urging the user to ‘grow up faster’, steering them towards extreme care of physical appearance at quite a young age. The research provided chimes with this statement, as previously identified through the analysis of comments that coincide with the beliefs of the negatively toned body image content. 

Analyzing appearance-based content is difficult — when someone conventionally pretty makes a benign TikTok, how does it become harmful? Of course, an attractive person existing and creating content is not damaging or encouraging women to change themselves. Content related to one’s physical looks becomes detrimental when it relies on unrealistic standards and shames others for not adhering to them. Sculpted features and contoured noses are features of  many current makeup trends, but when these ideals become actualized within the mind of the user through priming and conditioning, the individual may begin to self-objectify themselves. Self-objectification occurs when one views themself as an object to be looked at and appreciated before they are a human being with feelings and thoughts. Rather, they deem their own appearance the only tenet on which they should be evaluated. Self-objectification may go in tandem with self-sexualization. Van Oosten (2021)’s research on self-sexualization found that the young girls interviewed tended towards “criticism of sexualization in social media… [which] targeted mostly toward the person in the photo (i.e., as being “slutty”) and as such seemed to reinforce rather than resist the sexual double standard”. Further, Van Oosten cites W. Phillips Davison (1983)’s third-person effect theory in her findings, writing that the girls that she spoke with disclosed that they knew that other girls could be influenced by body image-content on social media, but that they themselves would not be, even though some of these same girls had unknowingly made a statement giving into these messages just one sentence prior. Hyperfeminity and hypersexualization are of course also prevalent on TikTok, but that does not make them harmful trends. Where hyperfemininity can turn unhealthy, however, is when the hyperfeminine content is done in order to appease male audiences or as a way to infantalize the user. A recent movement on the app has been the reclamation of hyperfeminity, contributing to content stating that “I’m just a girl!” who does “girl math” and eats “girl dinner”. An example of girl math, as stated by user Mie Wrist, is “Returning an item is the same as making money”, while girl dinner consists of multiple snacks (pickles, tortilla chips, string cheese, fruit) on a plate at once, substituted for a full meal. In retrospect, these behaviors seem to dumb down the women that began to use these terms for intellectual reclamation. These trends encourage users on a broad scale to play into the roles outlined by Wolf in The Beauty Myth. Wolf highlights, “Fat is not just fertility in women, but desire.” When women starve themselves to fuel their own thin ideal, they are sexually repulsive. When women weigh too much, they are sexually repulsive. When women have bountiful breasts and buttocks, then, they are sexually perfect. “Sex, food, and flesh;” women cannot possess all three at once. They define themselves by the concept of being attractive to others, to the point that it warps their own identity. “Adolescent starvation was, for me,” she writes, “a prolonged reluctance to be born into a woman if that meant assuming a station of beauty.” While trying to be in control of oneself by paying attention to their own physical form and caloric intake, Wolf argues that females still manage to fix themselves at the bottom of the chain of hegemonic masculinity. Despite notions of freedom of self-image and identity, sexism persists. The concept of ‘pretty privilege’ on TikTok upholds these values as well, attempting to highlight individuals while simultaneously oppressing those who do not fit in with conventional standards of beauty. Psychological research has shown that conventionally attractive people are seen as more trustworthy, sociable, and inviting (Baumeister and Leary, 1995) (Langlois et al., 2000) (Cunningham et al., 1995). Even though beauty ideals are seen as ‘unachievable’ by the mass populus, life as a conventionally and physically attractive person is more accessible — it makes sense that one would yearn for such a fate. When the TikTok algorithm pushes content that values attractiveness, and changing yourself in order to be seen as conventionally attractive, young girls who are already in a crisis of self-discovery will see their own beauty as ‘not enough’ if they do not look even remotely similar to the bodies and faces that they see online. If eating disorders are equipped to lose weight, plastic surgery is undertaken to change features, makeup is applied to cover imperfections, and filters are added to smooth out everything else, where does the original individual still exist if all of this was done in order to become someone different?

CONCLUSION:

Concepts of beauty and body image are cultivated as children, and will escalate as the children get online. Halim et al. (2024) shows that preschool-aged girls link their own gender with wanting to be attractive, even if they are too young to actually define what attractiveness really means to them. Children have an innate desire to grow up faster, even if their maturation does not match the adult mindset they are trying to mimic. Rather than cherish their time as a kid, adulthood and the idea of it represents a sense of freedom. However, being an adult (or acting like one) also comes with being sexualized and attempted sexual expression. In Alicia Silverstone’s Seventeen cover, she was freshly 18. The magazine, its own title referencing their young readership base, includes captions all seeming to deal with adult issues and hint at sexualized content, like ‘hot babes.’ Children’s perception of adulthood comes from the content that is advertised to them, either online or in the media. If appearance-based sexualization is seen often, whether in the form of scantily-clad marketing campaigns or sensual posing in TikTok lipsyncs, young women are being instructed to act that way in order to gain attention. If their bodies do not match those they are seeing online, self-hatred of one’s own body may arise. In magazines as well as online, there is a casualty with which the content is advertised — in print, celebrity gossip and body hatred share the same opening spread, and online, hair and makeup tutorials are sandwiched between “thinspo” and body checks. If a user interacts once with body dysmorphic content on TikTok, even just looking at the comments on a post, their For You page begins to contain more similar posts. If this cycle repeats, the posts become more specifically related to body hatred and eating disorders, and often, more graphic. While safety nets for harmful personal action have been created in online spaces, such as the disabling of damaging hashtags and sensitive content warnings, the tactics of prevention do not work. Even despite the current wave of feminism and all waves previous, nothing seems to have changed. TikTok was created as a new platform aimed to highlight typical individuals and create a safe space for teenagers and younger adults. Still, the content that is pushed mainly focuses on females, their appearance, and the struggles that come with it. While some of this content is of course motivating and attempts to create inclusivity, the large majority is damaging. Every generation of women has had to fight for their own competency. Sixty years after the Second Wave Feminism movement urged women to break free of systemic sexism, fifteen years after Seventeen launched their Body Peace Treaty, and ten years after the body positivity and body inclusivity movement rose on social media, societal tropes relating to women have barely changed. Now, these ideals are so ingrained within popular online media that social algorithms place intimidating concepts of physical perfection in the literal hands of young users when it may not have been on their mind at all to begin with. As much as the world is aware of unrealistic beauty standards, self-perception and self-comparison perseveres. As the world changes, so does the method of which women are suppressed. While the medium has changed due to technological advancements, the content of popular media remains damaging to young women. Despite the modern form that it has taken, negativity runs rampant, carrying the same message that past generations have worked to shut down.

Bibliography

AbuGharbieh, Layla. “Girlhood and the Hyper-Segmentation of Identity - MediaCat.” Mediacat Magazine, 30 Nov.

2023, mediacatmagazine.co.uk/girlhood-and-the-hyper-segmentation-of-identity/.

Alder, Sophie. Media Impact: It’s Effect on Girlhood Studies. 4 Dec. 2013, pp. 1–11,

www.academia.edu/9607436/Medias_Impact_on_Girlhoods.

Anderson, K.E. (2020), "Getting acquainted with social networks and apps: it is time to talk about TikTok", Library

Hi Tech News, Vol. 37 No. 4, pp. 7-12. https://doi.org/10.1108/LHTN-01-2020-0001

Aspire. “TikTok 101: Everything You Need to Know about the App Taking Gen Z by Storm.” Www.aspire.io,

 www.aspire.io/blog/tiktok-101-gen-z#:~:text=Think%20short%20and%20sweet.

Bandura, A. (2001). Social cognitive theory: An agentic perspective. Annual Reviews Psychology, 52, 1-20. 

10.1146/annurev.psych.52.1.1

Bandura, Albert. “Human Agency in Social Cognitive Theory.” American Psychologist, vol. 44, no. 9, 1989, pp. 

1175–1184, pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2782727/, https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066x.44.9.1175.

Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (1995). The need to belong: desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental 

human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117, 497-529.

Berents, Helen. “Hashtagging Girlhood: Gendering Social Media Representations of Global Politics.” International 

Feminist Journal of Politics, 6 July 2020, 

www.ifjpglobal.org/blog/2020/7/6/hashtagging-girlhood-iammalala-bringbackourgirls-and-gendering-representations-of-global-politics. 

Bluhm, Julia. “Sign the Petition.” Change.org, 19 Apr. 2012, 

www.change.org/p/seventeen-magazine-give-girls-images-of-real-girls.

Brady, William. “Social Media Algorithms Warp How People Learn from Each Other.” Scientific American, 25 

Aug. 2023, 

www.scientificamerican.com/article/social-media-algorithms-warp-how-people-learn-from-each-other/.

Bu, Juliet. “Social Media’s Betrayal of Girlhood | Arts | the Harvard Crimson.” Www.thecrimson.com, 13 Feb. 2024, 

www.thecrimson.com/article/2024/2/13/femininity-sephora-girlhood-bows-trend-girl-coquette-tiktok/.

Butler, Judith. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex. London, Routledge, 1993, p. x.

Campbell-Avenell, Nicole; Singh, Zahra. ““Hysteria” Has Been Used against BIWOC for Centuries — but Its

Impact Lives On.” Www.refinery29.com, 9 Dec. 2021, www.refinery29.com/en-gb/hysterical-female-biwoc.

Charles, Feng. “Looking Good: The Psychology and Biology of Beauty.” Journal of Young Investigators, Sept. 

2005, www.jyi.org/2005-september/2005/9/7/looking-good-the-psychology-and-biology-of-beauty.

Charles, Feng. “Looking Good: The Psychology and Biology of Beauty.” Journal of Young Investigators, Sept. 

2005, www.jyi.org/2005-september/2005/9/7/looking-good-the-psychology-and-biology-of-beauty.

Cowles, Charlotte. “Seventeen Magazine Makes “Body Peace Treaty.”” The Cut, 5 July 2012, 

www.thecut.com/2012/07/seventeen-magazine-makes-body-peace-treaty.html.

Croft, Isobel. “Why Reclaiming Girlhood Is the New Trend in Empowerment - LGSM.” Liverpool Guild Student 

Media, 2 Nov. 2023, 

www.liverpoolguildstudentmedia.co.uk/2023/11/02/doing-it-for-the-girls-reclaiming-girlhood/.

Cunningham, M. R., Roberts, A. R., Barbee, A. P., Druen, P. B., & Wu, C. H. (1995). " Their ideas of beauty are, on 

the whole, the same as ours": Consistency and variability in the cross-cultural perception of female physical 

attractiveness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 68, 261.

Cwynar-Horta, Jessica (31 December 2016). "The Commodification of the Body Positive Movement on Instagram". 

Stream: Interdisciplinary Journal of Communication. 8 (2): 36–56. doi:10.21810/strm.v8i2.203.

Davison, W. P. (1983). Third-person effect in communication. The Public Opinion Quarterly, 47(1), 1–15. 

https://doi.org/10.1086/268763

Dawson, Brit. “The Teenagers Creating Spaces Dedicated to Girlhood.” The Face, 10 Nov. 2023, 

theface.com/culture/the-teenagers-creating-spaces-dedicated-to-girlhood-blog-discord-girlblogsphere-barbi

e.

Dean, Melissa, and Karen Laidler. “A New Girl in Town: Exploring Girlhood Identities through Facebook.” First 

Monday, vol. 18, no. 2, 30 Jan. 2013, 

www.researchgate.net/publication/270749024_A_new_girl_in_town_Exploring_girlhood_identities_throug

h_Facebook.

Dellatto, Marisa. “TikTok Hits 1 Billion Monthly Active Users.” Forbes, 27 Sept. 2021, 

www.forbes.com/sites/marisadellatto/2021/09/27/tiktok-hits-1-billion-monthly-active-users/?sh=301e2836

44b6. 

Edwards, Stassa. “The History of Female Anger.” Www.vice.com, 21 Sept. 2015, 

www.vice.com/en/article/4xke4b/the-history-of-female-anger.

Eldridge, Ying-bei. Between Feminism and Femininity: Shifting Cultural Representations of Girlhood in the 1960s 

2017. Bowling Green State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and 

Dissertations Center https://scholarworks.bgsu.edu/acs_diss/94/

Elsayed, W. (2021). The negative effects of social media on the social identity of adolescents from the perspective of 

social work. Heliyon, 7(2). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2021.e06327

Ember, Sydney. “Condé Nast Ends Teen Vogue’s Print Run, Plans to Cut 80 Jobs.” The New York Times, 2 Nov. 

2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/11/02/business/media/conde-nast-teen-vogue.html.

Evdoxia, Tsaousi. Girlhood through Film Representation: Reconstructing Spaces and Places for Girls. Stockholms 

Universitet, 2012, www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1452071/FULLTEXT01.pdf.

Febos, Melissa. Girlhood. S.L., Bloomsbury, 2022.

Forman-Brunell, Miriam, et al. Girlhood: A Global History. JSTOR, Rutgers University Press, 2010, 

www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt5hj493.

Gottfried, Monica Anderson, Michelle Faverio and Jeffrey. “Teens, Social Media and Technology 2023.” Pew 

Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech, 11 Dec. 2023, 

www.pewresearch.org/internet/2023/12/11/teens-social-media-and-technology-2023/#:~:text=TikTok%2C

%20Snapchat%20and%20Instagram%20remain%20popular%20among%20teens%3A%20Majorities%20o

f.

Halim, May Ling D., et al. ““She’s so Pretty”: The Development of Valuing Personal Attractiveness among Young 

Children.” Child Development, 27 Apr. 2024, https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.14104.

Hays, Kali. “Seventeen Magazine Cutting Print down to “Special” Issues.” WWD, 13 Nov. 2018, 

wwd.com/feature/seventeen-magazine-cutting-print-issues-down-to-special-issues-1202906026/.

Hilton, Kathleen Clare. “Growing up Female: Girlhood Experiences and Social Feminism, 1890-1929 - ProQuest.” 

Www.proquest.com, 1987, 

www.proquest.com/openview/79bd463a4a3ef362228159ec3571f4f1/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750&

diss=y. 

Holland, G., & Tiggemann, M. (2016). A systematic review of the impact of the use of social networking sites on 

body image and disordered eating outcomes. Body image, 17, 100–110. 10.1016/j.bodyim.2016.02.008

Hood, Jamie. How to Be a Good Girl. Grieveland, 8 Dec. 2020.

Ionescu, C.G.; Licu, M. Are TikTok Algorithms Influencing Users’ Self-Perceived Identities and Personal Values? A 

Mini Review. Soc. Sci. 2023, 12, 465. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci12080465

Keenan, Cormac. “Strengthening Our Policies to Promote Safety, Security, and Well-Being on TikTok.” Newsroom | 

TikTok, 16 Aug. 2019, 

newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/strengthening-our-policies-to-promote-safety-security-and-wellbeing-on-tiktok

Kelly, Y., Zilanawala, A., Booker, C., & Sacker, A. (2019). Social Media Use and Adolescent Mental Health: 

Findings From the UK Millennium Cohort Study. EClinicalMedicine, 6, 59–68. 

10.1016/j.eclinm.2018.12.005

Kennedy M. ‘If the rise of the TikTok dance and e-girl aesthetic has taught us anything, it's that teenage girls rule the 

internet right now’: TikTok celebrity, girls and the Coronavirus crisis. Eur J Cult Stud. (2020) 23:1069–76. 

10.1177/1367549420945341

King, Alex . “What Does It Mean to Be a Girl in the Digital Age?” Huck, 29 Nov. 2016, 

www.huckmag.com/article/photos-explore-truth-teenage-girl-digital-age. 

Konrad, Kerstin, et al. “Brain Development during Adolescence.” Deutsches Aerzteblatt Online, vol. 110, no. 25, 21 

June 2013, pp. 425–431, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3705203/, 

https://doi.org/10.3238/arztebl.2013.0425.

Langlois, J. H., Kalakanis, L., Rubenstein, A. J., Larson, A., Hallam, M., & Smoot, M. (2000). Maxims or myths of 

beauty? A meta-analytic and theoretical review. Psychological Bulletin, 126, 390-423.

MacDowell, Paula. “Girls’ Perspectives on (Mis)Representations of Girlhood in Hegemonic Media Texts.” Girlhood 

Studies, vol. 10, no. 3, Jan. 2017, pp. 201–216, 

www.researchgate.net/publication/321658742_Girls’_Perspectives_on_MisRepresentations_of_Girlhood_i

n_Hegemonic_Media_Texts.

Marinova, Galia, et al. “The Role of Women in the Digital Age: Balancing Professional and Personal Challenges 

during the COVID-19 Pandemic.” Science Direct, Oct. 2021, 

www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S240589632101942X.

Marsh, Sarah. “TikTok Investigating Videos Promoting Starvation and Anorexia.” The Guardian, 7 Dec. 2020, 

www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/dec/07/tiktok-investigating-videos-promoting-starvation-and-anore

xia.

McCracken, Ellen. Decoding Women’s Magazines: From Mademoiselle to Ms. Basingstoke England, Macmillan, 

1993.

McLeod, Saul. “Albert Bandura’s Social Learning Theory.” Simply Psychology, 1 Feb. 2024, 

www.simplypsychology.org/bandura.html.

Mega, Laurie. “How the D’Amelios Built an Empire Using TikTok.” Foundr, 1 Nov. 2023, 

foundr.com/articles/building-a-business/the-damelios#:~:text=Together%2C%20the%20sisters%20have%2

0worked.

Morris, Timothy. You’re Only Young Twice : Children’s Literature and Film. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 

2000. Print.

Nariman, Ida. “Reinvention as a Tool in Girlhood: The Pinterest Time Machine.” Feminista-101, Medium.com, 24 

Oct. 2023, medium.com/feminista101/reinvention-as-a-tool-in-girlhood-the-pinterest-time-machine-

9e45311e6973. 

Naslund JA, Bondre A, Torous J, Aschbrenner KA. Social media and mental health: benefits, risks, and 

opportunities for research and practice. J Technol Behav Sci. 2020;5:245–57

National Institute of Mental Health. “The Teen Brain: 7 Things to Know.” National Institute of Mental Health, 2020, 

www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/the-teen-brain-7-things-to-know.

OFCOM. “Children and Parents: Media Use and Attitudes.” OFCOM, 29 Mar. 2023.

Ofcom. “Media Nations.” UK Ofcom, 3 Aug. 2023.

Office of the Surgeon General (OSG). Social Media and Youth Mental Health: The U.S. Surgeon General’s 

Advisory [Internet]. Washington (DC): US Department of Health and Human Services; 2023. Social Media 

Has Both Positive and Negative Impacts on Children and Adolescents. Available from: 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK594763/

Papageorgiou, A., Fisher, C. & Cross, D. “Why don’t I look like her?” How adolescent girls view social media and 

its connection to body image. BMC Women's Health 22, 261 (2022). 

https://doi.org/10.1186/s12905-022-01845-4

Raffoul, Amanda. “Exploring the Effect of Social Media on Teen Girls’ Mental Health.” News, 14 Sept. 2023, 

www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hsph-in-the-news/exploring-the-effect-of-social-media-on-teen-girls-mental-h

ealth/.

Rickman, Aimee. Adolescence, Girlhood, and Media Migration: US Teens’ Use of Social Media to Negotiate Offline 

Struggles. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books., Feb. 2018, pp. 1–186.

Rideout, Victoria, et al. “The Common Sense Census: Media Use by Tweens and Teens.” Center for Countering 

Digital Hate, 15 Dec. 2022.

Romele, Alberto, et al. “Panopticism Is Not Enough: Social Media as Technologies of Voluntary Servitude.” 

Surveillance & Society, vol. 15, no. 2, 8 May 2017, pp. 204–221, https://doi.org/10.24908/ss.v15i2.6021.

Ryan, Fergus. “Tiktok Algorithm: Why It Isn’t Really a Social Media App.” Vision of Humanity, 17 Mar. 2021, 

www.visionofhumanity.org/why-tiktok-isnt-really-a-social-media-app/.

“Seventeen Magazine Covers/Issues.” Seventeen Magazine Covers/Issues, seventeencovers.weebly.com/.

Smith, Ben. “How TikTok Reads Your Mind.” The New York Times, 5 Dec. 2021, 

www.nytimes.com/2021/12/05/business/media/tiktok-algorithm.html.

Smith, Rebecca. “Social Media’s Odd but Endearing Obsession with the Gender Binary.” The Michigan Daily, 1 

Nov. 2023, 

www.michigandaily.com/arts/digital-culture/whats-your-roman-empire-why-social-media-loves-gendered-t

rends/.

Stein, Matthew. “Michel Foucault, Panopticism, and Social Media.” ResearchGate, Apr. 2016, 

www.researchgate.net/publication/328887158_Michel_Foucault_Panopticism_and_Social_Media.

Strasburger, Victor. (2004). Children, adolescents, and the media. Current problems in pediatric and adolescent 

health care. 34. 54-113. 10.1016/j.cppeds.2003.08.001. 

Sullivan, Maggie. "Resilience in Girlhood: An Analysis of the Social Determinants of Anxiety Disorders for 

Adolescent Girls" (2023). Honor Scholar Theses. 221, Scholarly and Creative Work from DePauw 

University.https://scholarship.depauw.edu/studentresearch/221

TikTok. “Youth Safety and Well-Being.” TikTok, 8 Mar. 2023, 

www.tiktok.com/community-guidelines/en/youth-safety?cgversion=2023.

TikTok Newsroom. “Celebrating Our Thriving Community of 150 Million Americans.” Newsroom | TikTok, 21 Mar. 

2023, newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/150-m-us-users.

Valentine, C.W. The Experimental Psychology of Beauty. Routledge, 5 June 2015.

Vandenbosch, L.; Eggermont, S. “Understanding Sexual Objectification: A Comprehensive Approach Toward 

Media Exposure and Girls' Internalization of Beauty Ideals, Self-Objectification, and Body Surveillance”, 

Journal of Communication, Volume 62, Issue 5, October 2012, Pages 869–887. 

Van Oosten, Johanna M. F. “Adolescent Girls’ Use of Social Media for Challenging Sexualization.” Gender, 

Technology and Development, vol. 25, no. 1, 12 Feb. 2021, pp. 1–22, 

https://doi.org/10.1080/09718524.2021.1880039.

Waterson, Jim. “TikTok Being Used by 16% of British Toddlers, Ofcom Finds.” The Guardian, 29 Mar. 2022, 

www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/mar/29/tiktok-being-used-by-16-of-british-toddlers-ofcom-finds.

Weber, Max. “Science as a Vocation.” Oxford University Press, 1946.

Published as “Wissenschaft als Beruf,” Gesammlte Aufsaetze zur Wissenschaftslehre (Tubingen, 1922), pp.

 524-55. Originally a speech at Munich University, 1918, published in 1919 by Duncker & Humblodt, 

Munich.

Wolf, Naomi. The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used against Women. London, Vintage Classic, 1991.

Wrist, Mie. [@miewristg]. (2023, Nov. 12). Girl Math #girlmath #girlmaths #scandinavia #savingmoney #fyp 

#foryou #fyp #foryoupage [Video]. TikTok. https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGebhQ7SG/