Young TikTok Users Quickly Encounter Problematic Posts, Researchers Say

TikTok appears to be pushing videos about eating disorders and self-harm to 13-year-old users at a rapid clip, researchers said on Wednesday, raising new concerns about the service’s influence on young people.

TikTok tailors a stream of short videos to people based on their interests, view times and the accounts they follow. It starts recommending content tied to eating disorders and self-harm to 13-year-olds within 30 minutes of their joining the platform, and sometimes in as little as three minutes, according to a report on Wednesday from the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a nonprofit.

Once young users viewed and liked content about body image and mental health, TikTok automatically recommended related videos to them every 39 seconds, according to the researchers. To test the app, the researchers set up eight accounts in August, posing as 13-year-olds, the minimum age for users, in the United States, Britain, Australia and Canada.

“The pathways into extreme content were so innocuous,” Imran Ahmed, chief executive of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, said in an interview. “Your eye might be caught by a video of an aspirational body in beautiful clothes and very quickly the algorithm realizes you’re interested in body image.”

Some of the test accounts saw videos promoting “junkorexia,” a slang term for people with anorexia who eat only junk food, and others from users talking about suicide or featuring razor blades. The researchers found that many videos promoted eating disorders through hashtags using code words in an effort to avoid moderation and that harmful videos sat alongside more positive ones about recovery. For example, people have used #EdSheeranDisorder to tag posts about eating disorders while appearing to talk about the pop singer.

TikTok pushed back on the findings of the report.

“This activity and resulting experience does not reflect genuine behavior or viewing experiences of real people,” said Mahsau Cullinane, a spokeswoman for TikTok. “We regularly consult with health experts, remove violations of our policies and provide access to supportive resources for anyone in need.”