Bite Back with Abbey Sharp - The Algorithms Are Radicalizing Our Kids to Hate their Bodies & Fear Food - The Diet Culture Pipeline Parents NEED to Know About

Starting point is 00:00:00 This is not Google search circa 2010 where you have to actively seek out a pro-a-forae forum. Nor does a teen have to engage with an extremist video to fall down the rabbit hole. What is happening today is algorithmic grooming through escalating emotional intensity. Welcome to another episode of Bite Back with Abby Sharp, where I dismantle die culture rules, call it the charlatans spinning the pseudoscience and help you achieve food freedom for good. Today we're tackling a topic that hits very close to home, how diet culture is shaping the next generation in ways more subtle and insidious than we've ever realized.

Starting point is 00:00:51 We're talking diet culture's evolution on social media, the role of algorithmic escalation and AI to extremism, edies, and more. what puts kids at higher risk and what parents can do today to protect their kids. You know, I actually started my career in this space after receiving countless emails and messages from preteens and teens asking about 800 calorie diets or all banana meals. And these messages have only become more pervasive and aggressive as the algorithm and AI economies have evolved. I'm also a mom. So I am uniquely passionate about this topic, and I really do hope that this episode will drive home the urgency that I feel about this every

Starting point is 00:01:43 single day. All right, friends, let's get into it. All right, so to set the stage, we need to talk about diet culture's evolution throughout the years. Back when I was a kid and teen in the 90s and early 2000, diet culture largely came in the form of magazines and television. We'd see Kate Moss in her famous Calvin Klein ads, the Victoria Secret fashion shows, and low-calorie diet programs advertised during commercial breaks. Diet culture in tabloid celebrity magazines was also often truly unhinged and cruel. The lifestyles of celebrities who are expected to bounce back, not have any cellulite, and maintain a size zero frame felt somewhat separate from our own.

Starting point is 00:02:35 But social media has collapsed the line between celebrity and peer. So today, influencers present themselves as relatable, normal people sharing their meals, routines, workouts, and what I in a day content directly from their bedrooms and kitchens, making extreme behaviors feel both achievable and socially expected. Algorithms then intensify this by flooding users with endless similar content, creating the illusion that constant body optimization is not only normal, but necessary for belonging, attractiveness, and success. For our kids and teens, diet culture is now so hyper-personalized and algorithmically optimized that it is virtually inescapable. So let's talk about the types of dangerous diet culture content that. that you and your kids are very likely engaging with every day.

Starting point is 00:03:34 One of the more recent flavors that is largely targeting young women, teens, and even younger girls is Skinny Talk, which you guys know I have talked a lot about here. Skinny Talk is an online community that romanticizes extreme thinness at any cost. Unlike the more subtle diet culture of the recent past, which often marketed itself as wellness or clean eating, Skinny Talk is saying the quiet part out loud and is reclaiming the relentless pursuit of thinness as a marker of moral superiority. Skinny Talk creators are telling their young, vulnerable viewers to celebrate hunger pains, drink calorie-free beverages to override body cues, and to repeat toxic mantras like eat small to be small and your morning skinny is someone else's bloated. And because these creators are beautiful, thin, and often explicitly associating their thinness with their luxury, lifestyle, and social status, vulnerable young viewers may feel pressured to

Starting point is 00:04:42 follow suit. It is honestly very messed up. Diet culture also doesn't just affect young girls. Just consider the extreme biohacking, longevity optimization, and looks-maxing trends that we're now seeing blow up. From Ashton Hall's unhinged 3 a.m. morning routine to clavicular's bone-smashing facial symmetry techniques, to the frequent promotion of stimulants, nicotine, and unregulated peptide injections for promoting fat loss or muscle growth, boys are now just as much at risk of body insecurity and disordered eating. And if you're thinking, well, my son is not searching for weight loss tips or facial, symmetry hacks. The reality is, they don't have to. This is not Google search circa 2010, where you have to actively seek out a pro-A-N-A forum. Nor does a teen have to engage with an extremist

Starting point is 00:05:44 video to fall down the rabbit hole. What is happening today is algorithmic grooming through escalating emotional intensity. The pipeline starts with socially acceptable self-improve content and gradually shifts towards fear, shame, obsession, and identity-based ideology because those emotional states are what generate higher engagement. For girls and young women, the path often goes healthy recipes, wellness, fashion, or beauty tips, to clean eating, to body optimization, to moralized thinness, to skinny talk, to explicit pro-a-N-N-N-A-N. content. For young men and boys, it may start out as fitness or grooming, which leads to self-improvement, which leads to aesthetic obsession, to looks-maxing, and to black pill, red pill, manosphere, and in-cell

Starting point is 00:06:43 ideology. One recent study analyzed more than 80,000 looks-maxing videos and found a significant overlap between looks-maxing hashtags and in-cell content. And if you aren't, aware, this is the kind of content that has inspired mass violence like the infamous Elliot Rogers 2014 Ila Vista Mass Unaliving or Alec Manassian's 2018 Toronto Van Attack. And here is an even scarier consideration. Sometimes kids don't need to even search for the original seeding content at all. In 2021, the Wall Street Journal created over 100 bot TikTok account. programs with specific interests.

Starting point is 00:07:31 Many of these accounts were programmed to be 13 year olds, with interests varying from weight loss to gambling. Throughout the investigation, they found that even if a bot was not programmed to be interested in losing weight and never searched for any weight-related content, TikTok pushed these 13-year-old accounts into harmful diet culture rabbit holes,

Starting point is 00:07:56 Interacting even briefly with one diet video led to more diet culture content, 40% of which either promoted or normalized eating disorder behaviors. Following this ex-posé, TikTok pledged to improve its content moderation. They apparently adjusted its recommendation system so that users wouldn't get trapped in unhealthy content loops, which, honestly, based on the echo chambers that I still find myself getting pushed into, feel. like a massive fail. They also changed the default setting for kids under 15 to private, which really just takes one click to make public. And they banned obviously problematic words like pro-ana or Bonespo, which, as we all know, we can all easily get around by using code words or alternate spellings. Not surprisingly, these so-called safety improvements are just not enough to combat the hyper-palative, addictive, addictive,

Starting point is 00:08:56 attention economy that social media sites thrive on. So this is no longer a slippery slope. This is an avalanche and we are all already caught up in it. Adding an entirely new layer to the problem is the rapid proliferation of AI generated content and tools. Because kids aren't just comparing themselves to real influencers anymore. They are comparing themselves to AI enhanced filtered, edited, or even fully AI generated people and lifestyles that literally do not exist. Creators use AI tools to alter body shape, smooth skin, change facial symmetry, edit meals, fake routines, generate hyper-polished content, and even create entirely artificial influencers designed to maximize engagement. I'm not even joking. I literally just got an email from a company,

Starting point is 00:09:56 offering that they make an AI version of me so that I can pump out even more content. I respectfully declined. So now the beauty standards kids are trying to achieve are becoming not just unrealistic, but biologically impossible. And when kids are already struggling with identity, belonging, or self-worth, these impossible standards become even more psychologically powerful. But let's talk about why kids are so easily drawn into these pipelines and why they can become so sticky and inescapable once you're in. So first of all, there's the obvious developmental consideration. We know that the prefrontal cortex does not fully develop until the age of 25 or even a little later. And these areas that are still under construction can include impulse control, ability to balance short-term rewards and long-term goals,

Starting point is 00:10:58 emotional regulation and weighing behavioral consequences. So this is just kind of biology and is why we generally have laws around substance use, driving, and other risky behaviors for kids. Note, no such rules or laws apply to media use. But when biology interacts with the current environment, we see a massive spike in risk. Gen Alpha and young Gen Z kids have grown up in an era of of economic, social, political safety and health uncertainty. Parents, understandably, have looked around at the rising crime and danger in the outside world and assumed that the digital playground would be the only safe space for their kids to play. This ultimately became even more normalized during the 2020 COVID lockdown

Starting point is 00:11:52 when many of us were literally not even allowed to play in playgrounds. In the comfort and safety of our own homes, parents understandably saw the internet as a place where nothing bad could get us. Not a virus, not drugs, not some creepy purr from the wrong side of town. No one really predicted that the dangers lurking online might not only be more easily accessible, but also more damaging. Kids and teens today have lived through and are very likely still living through a pandemic-induced loneliness epidemic, with loads of research showing that more than half of youth experienced loneliness, associated with depression, anxiety, addictive behaviors, loss of peer connection, and disrupted identity formation. Late childhood and adolescence is the stage of life where belonging matters most, both neurologically, and psychologically. So when opportunities for offline belonging weaken, kids are going to look

Starting point is 00:13:00 online for that sense of community belonging identity and purpose. And when we look at research on online radicalization, pro-ED spaces, and manosphere communities, we see a consistent similar pattern. The entry point is usually not ideology. It is emotional vulnerability. 23 paper explicitly described pro-ED online communities as an online radicalization process, describing how these communities provide emotional support, normalize self-harm, and validate extreme behaviors as part of a shared identity. And because they often feel emotionally nurturing and socially rewarding, they're incredibly sticky. Likewise, research in Manosphere communities have found that these forums tend to convert young boys and men's loneliness and

Starting point is 00:13:56 pain into collective resentment. They provide a brotherhood, shared identity, and shared language for suffering that feels emotionally powerful for socially isolated teens. NAI is really just adding more fuel to the fire here as AI systems are getting frighteningly good at detecting emotional vulnerability. The longer someone lingers on insecurity-driven content, whether that's loneliness, body image struggles, self-improvement, or dating insecurity, the more that platforms can personalize and intensify the content and ads that they're shown. What used to feel like passive scrolling is increasingly becoming hyper-targeted emotional conditioning.

Starting point is 00:14:44 We're even starting to see AI chat bots marketed as friends, therapists, coaches, girlfriends, or companions for lonely users. And while some of these tools may have benefits for certain populations, there's also growing concern that vulnerable teens may turn to AI for validation, identity, and belonging instead of real world relationships and support systems. One of the scariest things I heard recently

Starting point is 00:15:11 when I interviewed Caitlin Riger, the author of Smartphone Revolution, is that some of the preteens that she speaks to in schools around the world, not only, are afraid to have face-to-face conversations with their peers, but now they feel that they have to run each text response through chat chippy tea because they do not know how to communicate at all. So this is not just a diet culture problem anymore. It's an entire digital ecosystem, increasingly powered by algorithms and artificial intelligence that profit from keeping people insecure, isolated, socially incompetent, and endlessly trying to optimize themselves. So at this

Starting point is 00:15:52 point, I know a lot of parents are probably feeling terrified or overwhelmed and maybe even a little bit guilty. But I really want to stress here that this is not about being a perfect parent. And it's also not about banning your kid from the internet forever. These platforms are designed by some of the smartest engineers in the world to capture attention and emotionally hook vulnerable users. So this is a systems issue, not an individual parenting failure. That said, for parents of kids who have not yet had direct exposure to social media, there is a rapidly growing international movement of parent-led initiatives encouraging families to delay smartphones and social media access for kids for as long as.

Starting point is 00:16:42 possible. These groups operate on the same core idea that parents are more likely to delay smartphones and social media if they do it collectively so that their child isn't getting FOMO because they're the only one. So in Canada, there's a program called Unplugged Canada. In the US, there's wait until 8th. And in the UK, there is smartphone-free childhood. I'm personally part of the unplugged committee at my children's school. And we introduced that pledge starting way back in kindergarten. So it really is never too early to start building buy-in from other parents. And when social media is introduced, the most important thing that we can do is make our kids feel safe talking about what they're seeing online without fear of punishment or shame.

Starting point is 00:17:34 Because if kids think that they're going to get their phone taken away, the second they admit that they've been exposed to harmful content, they're just going to hide it from us. So watching content together whenever possible is a really great way to unpack what kids see in real time while getting curious about how your kids interpret what they see. So asking questions like, how does this content make you feel about yourself? Do you think this creator's lifestyle is realistic or sustainable? Do you notice how the algorithm keeps showing you more of this kind of content? Helping kids build media literacy and critical thinking is one of the strongest protective factors that we have in the social media and AI-driven landscape. I also think we need to prioritize offline, belonging, and community now more than ever before.

Starting point is 00:18:26 Because as we discussed, the research makes it clear that loneliness and social isolation make kids more vulnerable to harmful online communities. So sports, clubs, volunteering, hobbies, camp, creative outlets, shared family meals, part-time jobs, I mean, even just unstructured time with real friends in real life, all of these things help kids build identity and self-worth outside of the algorithm. Modeling body and food neutrality is also critical here. If the home is filled with dieting, body share, shaming, earning food, moralizing weight gain, or obsessing over appearance, kids are going to

Starting point is 00:19:09 absorb that long before TikTok enters the chat. We cannot completely control the algorithm. But we can create homes where worth is measured by so much more than what somebody looks like. Now, obviously, this is a super nuanced topic, and I've got other podcast episodes on this, plus a comprehensive 60-minute training webinar that I will love. link to in the description. But in short, we want to be mindful of using moralizing language around bodies and food while modeling balanced eating, flexibility, and body kindness during shared meals. In fact, there is a lot of good research linking shared family meals to a reduced risk of problematic dieting behaviors and eating disorder risk in kids. And finally,

Starting point is 00:19:56 normalize asking for help. I really love that my generation has embraced the importance of mental health. So talk openly to your kids about times that you've sought support from therapists, dietitians, social workers, or teachers at school. Reducing the stigma around asking for help makes a massive difference in our kids' confidence to do so. All right, friends, I know that today's episode was pretty heavy, especially for those of us with kids or young people in our lives. But this topic is incredibly important to me, both as a dietitian and a mom. So I really do hope that it has sparked some important conversations in your home. As always, please do leave me a comment if this episode was very helpful and subscribe for more episodes.

Starting point is 00:20:42 And if you want more support on feeding kids, I've got a whole chapter in my book, The Hunger Cushing Combo Method, as well as that training webinar that I mentioned earlier. Signing up with Science and SASS, I'm Abby Sharp. Thanks for listening.

Bite Back with Abbey Sharp - The Algorithms Are Radicalizing Our Kids to Hate their Bodies & Fear Food - The Diet Culture Pipeline Parents NEED to Know About

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