Pro-anorexia and starvation content still exists on TikTok. Here's what the app is doing about it.

TikTok is looking into new ways to keep harmful pro-starvation and anorexia videos off its platform after discovering how prevalent they were on the short-form video app.

TikTok made a commitment to support body-positive content on its platform with a September statement announcing efforts to crack down on ads promoting weight-loss and dieting products, as well as partnerships with the National Eating Disorder Association (NEDA) and other advocates using the app. Still, a piece in the Guardian showed just this week how easy it is for users to find harmful videos through loopholes, such as using slight misspellings for search terms commonly associated with the pro-eating-disorder community that TikTok blocks.

The pro-eating-disorder community (which also dubs itself pro-ED and pro-Ana, for anorexia) is a harmful, web-based subculture in which “people with anorexia, bulimia, or other eating disorders support practices involved with anorexia or weight loss,” according to the American Addiction Centers website. “These sites may strengthen the disease of anorexia, as people involved in the discussions often praise weight loss and discourage healthy body shape and size.”

The videos the Guardian recently uncovered has users encouraging viewers to, for example, “flood these comments with ways to loose alot [sic] of weight in 3 days, healthy or unhealthy.” According to TikTok, efforts have already been made to ensure that these videos aren’t allowed on the platform.

“As soon as this issue was brought to our attention, we took action banning the accounts and removing the content that violated those guidelines, as well as banning particular search terms. As content changes, we continue to work with expert partners, update our technology and review our processes to ensure we can respond to emerging and new harmful activities,” TikTok U.K. said in a statement to the Guardian.

A representative for TikTok U.S. assures Yahoo Life that the team behind the U.S. platform has taken similar action. “We recently introduced new ad policies that ban ads for fasting apps and weight loss supplements and place stronger restrictions on weight loss claims and references to body image. These types of ads do not support the positive, inclusive and safe experience we strive for on TikTok,” the representative says. “In addition, we do not show search results for terms related to eating disorders, and we continually update our safeguards to account for intentional misspellings and as terms/phrases evolve.”

TikTok’s September statement also made mention of steps users can take to ensure that they’re not being served certain content by reporting videos, blocking users, filtering comments and using features to tell TikTok that they’re “not interested” in seeing related content.

When it comes to ensuring that harmful content doesn’t make its way onto the app to begin with, however, Clara Guillem, a 24-year-old content creator who focuses on mental health and eating-disorder recovery, tells Yahoo Life that TikTok’s proactive measures aren’t enough. “The truth of the matter is that there are two different ways that pro-ED content makes its way to TikTok. One is the obvious: Using weight loss hashtags, and different misspellings of proana search terms (pr04n4, edthings, thinsparation),” Guillem says via email. “The other is not so obvious: Masking content as pro-recovery.”

Guillem explains that popular hashtags like #edrecovery will often be used to post content that might not be intended to harm viewers but does, by way of putting an eating disorder or behavior associated with it on display. “Before-and-after recovery photos, where the before photos can be used as ED inspiration,” she cites as an example. “Other content could include ‘bragging’ about eating-disorder symptoms or making ‘relatable’ posts like ‘you can only recognize these images if you’ve had an eating disorder’ followed by photos of crushed ice, apple cider vinegar, mint gum, fitness apps and others things that in a way end up teaching kids how to successfully starve themselves.”

Coming across this content, whether intentional or not, can be extremely harmful, NEDA communications manager Chelsea Kronengold tells Yahoo Life. “With social media, it’s known that people are more likely to follow advice or follow trends from peers or people they perceive to be peers, so micro-influencers, or even you’re everyday influencers, more so than celebrities,” she says. “And so, these influencers that are health and wellness and diet, fitness, that have a large following, can cause harm and damage, because people are taking their likely nonmedical, nontraining advice at face value. So there are these wild fad diets and trends that people are taking as medical advice when it’s not.”

The power that this content can have on users can be seen through the vast responses and the harmful communities that it in turn forms.

It’s also not new to TikTok, as a number of social media platforms before it have worked to block similar dangerous content and communities. Previously popular hashtags like #thinspo found homes on Tumblr, Pinterest and Instagram before people advocated against them. “A lot of what I ‘learned’ to do actually came from Tumblr,” Guillem says of her own eating disorder, which she developed at age 14. “Eating disorders are so competitive, and on that website (and between my sick friends and I) there was always an invisible push to be the ‘sickest’ one. People would post their sickly bodies and habits under several different ‘pro-ana’ hashtags that kids like me would easily get sucked into. Even after the competition and Tumblr took absence from my life, the eating disorder stayed.”

And while Guillem thinks that TikTok should “completely ban any tags that can be used in this way,” TikTok’s safety policy manager, Tara Wadhwa, tells Yahoo Life that the app is wary of removing certain hashtags that also provide support.

“TikTok supports those who want to share their story and use their voice to raise awareness for eating disorders,” Wadhwa says. “Our policies aim to enable people to find support within communities on TikTok while also addressing and removing content that promotes eating habits that are likely to cause health issues.”

While the balance of enabling supportive communities on the app and identifying harmful content within them is a difficult one to strike, TikTok’s partnership with NEDA is to make sure it’s on the right track. The short-form video app has even earned praise for elevating creators who are posting videos of themselves eating food and offering users a safe space to virtually join them, in an effort to provide meal support to young people with, or recovering from, an eating disorder. The app hopes to not only eliminate harmful content but also utilize the partnership with NEDA to present users with helpful resources instead.

“We’ll soon begin redirecting searches and hashtags — for terms provided to us by NEDA, or associated with unsafe content we’ve removed from our platform — to the NEDA Helpline, where NEDA can then provide confidential support, tools and resources,” the TikTok rep says. “TikTok recently supported Weight Stigma Awareness Week by launching a dedicated page in our app to support NEDA’s #EndWeightHateCampaign. This page was featured in our Discover page and educated our community about what weight stigma is, why it should matter to everyone and how someone can find support or support others who may be struggling.”

If you or someone you know is struggling with body image or eating concerns, NEDA’s toll-free, confidential helpline is available to help by phone (800-931-2237) and click-to-chat message. Crisis support is also available via text message by texting ‘NEDA’ to 741741.

Read more from Yahoo Life

• Why the coronavirus self-quarantine can be triggering for people with eating disorders

• Young people struggling with eating disorders find support on TikTok

• The D’Amelio sisters get ‘canceled’ after ‘immature’ behavior. But experts say they were just acting like teens.

Want lifestyle and wellness news delivered to your inbox? Sign up here for Yahoo Life’s newsletter.