Diet culture on TikTok: a descriptive content analysis.
Public Health Nutr
; 27(1): e169, 2024 Sep 23.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-39310984
ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVE:
To investigate how dieting is portrayed on TikTok and the potential implications for public health considering the effect of diet culture on eating disorders amongst young people.DESIGN:
A cross-sectional descriptive content analysis of 250 videos from the five most popular diet-related hashtags. A codebook was developed to analyse the content of the videos and collect the engagement for each video (likes, comments and shares).SETTING:
TikTok website.PARTICIPANTS:
There were no participants in this study.RESULTS:
More than half of the videos portrayed 'body checking', a potentially harmful practice for body image. Of the videos that represented body image, almost half represented body image negatively. However, most videos promoted the idea of 'healthy eating', and only 6·4 % displayed disordered eating behaviours. Over half of the videos provided dietary advice, and of those videos, most content creators claimed to be experts (64 %). Claiming expertise was not significantly associated with engagement; however, the use of humour was significantly associated with engagement. Additionally, males were more likely than females to disclose their goals of the diet.CONCLUSIONS:
Overall, it appears that TikTok is commonly used to share nutrition tips and personal experiences around dieting and eating in general, often employing humour as an effective technique. The popularity of the platform and rapid dissemination of information would be a useful tool for health professionals, especially those working with eating disorders, to utilise.Key words
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Body Image
Limits:
Adolescent
/
Adult
/
Female
/
Humans
/
Male
Language:
En
Journal:
Public Health Nutr
Journal subject:
CIENCIAS DA NUTRICAO
/
SAUDE PUBLICA
Year:
2024
Document type:
Article
Affiliation country:
Australia
Country of publication:
United kingdom