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Jessica Karl & Lisa Jarvis, Columnists

#SkinnyTok Rebranded Eating Disorders Dangerously Fast

Social media influencers mask their harmful content with seemingly-innocuous healthy buzzwords to reach a broader audience.

This trend won’t go quietly.

Photographer: Veronka & Cia/Moment RF

#SkinnyTok is dead. Or at least that’s what TikTok wants you to believe after its recent ban of the hashtag promoting an extreme thin ideal. That might have appeased regulators, but it shouldn’t satisfy parents of teens on the app. An army of influencers is keeping the trend alive, putting vulnerable young people in harm’s way.

Today’s social media landscape makes it all too easy for creators to repackage and disguise disordered eating as a “healthy” part of everyday life. That lifestyle then gets monetized on various platforms — via habit trackers, group chats and 30-day aspirational challenges — and shared with a much broader audience.