A Content Analysis on Fitspiration and Thinspiration Posts on TikTok

Abstract

Anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa, two common eating disorders that affect young women, are becoming quite a prevalent in recent years as social media gains popularity. Certain forms of content circulating on social media may be correlated to negative body image and eating disorders. Recent research has investigated forms of content referred to as fitspiration and thinspiration posts, as many of these posts promote specific body ideals typically involving a very thin body type. This exploratory study aims to investigate the relationship female adolescents have with TikTok in relation to body type, the development of negative body image, and eating disorders. The goal of this research is to further understand how social media influences these body image and disordered behavior among teenagers in America. A content analysis was conducted on a sample of 80 videos and 1,200 comments taken from TikTok under the hashtags of #fitspiration, #th1nspõ, and #kcaltok. The findings show that thinspiration content has the potential to induce negative body image disorder habits, as these types of posts had a heavier emphasis on unrealistic body ideals and sparked more conversations surrounding eating disorders. Fitspiration posts were found to have less of an emphasis on promoting skinniness, however, still induced comments surrounding negative body image and weight loss. Future research should continue to monitor and further investigate this content as well as understand the communities of users on other similar content types such as meanspiration, sweetspiration, and bonespiration.