“Skinny Talk” or the extreme weight loss. How did Tiktok become a complex factory for some teenagers
A new trend is ravaging among teenagers present on Tiktok: the phenomenon “skinny talk”. It is not just about diets or a healthy lifestyle, but about a digital cult of extreme thinness that risks transforming social networks into a mining ground for young people.
Adolescents resort to an extreme form to lose weight. Photo: Archive
Tiktok is an avalanche of videos with young people, especially girls, who enter the so-called “fashionable” or “skinny talk”. It is not just about diet advice, but a true culture in which to be weak – very weak – it is seen as the ideal of beauty, I write France 24 and AFP.
A cult with their own algorithm
At first glance, it looks like a cute corner of the world: colors, girls who make yoga in the perfect sunset, “what i eat in a day” (no I eat in a day) on a pastel background. But the scroll quickly becomes a trap. From two to three “motivational” clips, you reach contents which It glorifies starvation, chronic fatigue and clothes that “should be wide if you want to look good.” It is a daily tutorial of bodily dysmorphic, free and unlimited. If you look at a clip about weight loss once, the next day Tiktok fills your page with the same type of content – how to eat less, how to lose weight, how to look “perfect”. It's a circle from which it is hard to go out.
Modern adolescence: between reality and algorithm
“Skinny Talk” is like a crooked mirror that tells you that you are not enough until only skin, bone and Valencia filter. Girls get to compare their bodies not with other people, but with unrealistic ideals, digitally modified or simply impossible. This is no longer a weakening and health cure, it is a two -edged sword: the extreme self -control and a silent pressure that is insinuated in every “too caloric” breakfast.
Tiktok – the new oracle of (ne) self -confidence
As if the pressure of being weak was not sufficient, the trend also adds a disturbing note: the excessive sexualization of silhouettes that seem removed from an anime fantasy. Tiktok becomes a strange dance ring where teenagers are trapped between the desire to be accepted and the need to be “seen” – whatever this means in the filtered world. It doesn't matter if you are healthy, if you are going well. The perfect body sold by Tiktok does not exist. It is a collective creation, a distorted fantasy, cooked with filters, good light and a soundtrack chill. An illusion that comes with a huge price.
The algorithmic silence hurts
And perhaps the most toxic aspect of this worrying phenomenon for the health of such young people is that it comes in a soft voice. It does not scream, it does not impose. It slips into your life, clip with clip, until it becomes a norm. This is how food disorders, isolation, depression appear. This is how generations are born that believe that success begins with the lack of a belly, not self -confidence.
Tiktok, accused in France to promote extreme weakening among young people
The French government has notified the European Commission about the new dangerous trend on Tiktok, known as “Skinny Talk”. Authorities claim that the platform allows the spread of clips that encourage excessive weight loss, starvation and unrealistic ideals, affecting adolescents. The French Minister for Digital Affairs, Clara Chappaz, announced that he has notified the European Commission and the National Massion Regulatory Authority on the 'Skinnytok' phenomenon on the Tiktok social network, which promotes extreme weight loss.
France wants stricter rules for social platforms and demands more transparency in how algorithms work that influence children and adolescent behaviors. If deviations are found, the Commission could sanction Tiktok based on the new European law for digital services (DSA).
What can we do?
Time has no patience. Real digital education is needed – not only sterile warnings in textbooks, but interactive courses on how algorithms, filters and online validation work. Parents present are needed who do not enter with the boots in the digital life of children, but with empathy. Of European public policies that say a clear stop to these skids. And, above all, a viral counter-national, reminding girls that their value is not reduced to a waist and an Instagram smile. “Skinny Talk” is not just a passing mold. It is a treacherous form of digital colonization of the mind and body, which breaks the balance between reality and projection. In a world where we talk more and more about inclusion, mental health and empathy, it's time to start a new type of conversation. One in which beauty no longer means “to be as weak as possible”, but to be true.
