Beauty and the algorithm: online trends reward teens' risky behaviour

Already facing pressure from her dance and school peers, Ms Johns struggled to find help in her regional town, waiting four years to receive a diagnosis.

Now 21, she says seeing trends which encourage similar thinking being pushed to nine and 10-year olds on TikTok is "awful".

"It's kind of almost a shock to the system realising how early young children are being exposed to negative information," she says.

"I'm looking at it and I'm like, 'Oh my god, I was five years older than some of these kids.'"

The pressure to keep up has always been a part of the teenage experience but social media now provides feedback that is free, instantaneous and global.

Some social media users are beginning to criticise the algorithm for pushing out a new, hyper-specific insecurity as quickly as every few weeks.

In the meantime, however, anything from the length of your philtrum, to the shape of your nailbeds, to the colour of your labia is up for critique.

Ms Johns now uses the algorithm to her advantage - by only interacting with body positive content, she is able to avoid trends which could lead to negative self-image.

But she says the competitive nature of eating disorders means those dealing with them are unlikely to seek out content that goes against their thinking.

"If you're in that mindset, you're not going to be looking towards that."

The Butterfly Foundation works with social media platforms to remove content that could encourage disordered eating.

Melissa Wilton, head of communications and engagement, acknowledges they are up against a cycle in which trends explode and disappear within days, but says the community itself is getting better at slapping down harmful content.

She points to the short shelf-life of the "leggings legs" hashtag, a thinly-veiled rebranding of the thigh gap.

"The community just jumped on it," she says.

"They really came down on people who were posting that content and I think that very much encouraged that particular hashtag to die out quite quickly."

"It's a really positive change."

Ms Wilton says curating their feed to include a diverse range of bodies can help social media users see unhealthy trends for what they are, but stresses that the onus cannot be all on the users.

"We really need to put pressure on the social media platforms to make it a safer place for people."

Samuel Cornell, a researcher at the University of NSW, says children have always taken risks, but social media "accelerates and amplifies" normal human and childhood desires.

"Popularity is, for a child, front and centre, as it always has been," he says.

"The difference is now you've got social media and - even as a kid - you can become practically famous just by having an Instagram account or a TikTok."

Mr Cornell describes TikTok's algorithm as a game of Russian Roulette.

Risky stunts travel rapidly and influencers who win big with a viral video learn to play the game.

Copycat behaviour that is typical in teenagers drives dangerous challenges to go viral.

But the volume of risky content children are exposed to is heightened by the internet, Mr Cornell says, as well as the level of risk inherent in some of these trends.

"If you're a child, you're not fully developed yet, your brain's not fully developed," he says.

"It's hard to delineate between what is fun and what is dangerous."

These trends have been blamed for a nation-wide rise in the number of young criminal offenders, which sees teenagers "posting and boasting" about their illegal activity.

Mary (not her real name), whose 17-year-old son has been arrested multiple times after posting his crimes online, said everything would have been different without social media.

"The phone is the biggest problem because it connects them all," she says.

"They've got maps of each other so they know where each other is."

"They've got eyes on each other all the time."

Mary's son started using drugs during Victoria's COVID-19 lockdowns when she had to leave him at home alone while she worked in aged care.

She has spent the years since alternately dragging her son out of strangers' houses and visiting him in juvenile detention.

Lockdowns, drug use and peer pressure all led her son down the path he is on, she says, but social media exacerbated everything.

"It became a social media trend that if you did something you posted it or it didn't happen.

"You'd see all these kids in America doing motorbike stunts in the middle of the streets and stuff and then all of a sudden Australia's doing it and then all of a sudden England's doing it and it just became, that's what you did.

"Whatever you do, you post it because you've got bragging rights."

From March 2023, those convicted of motor vehicle related crimes in Queensland faced an additional two years of imprisonment if they posted about it on social media.

Similar laws were introduced in NSW in March of this year and have been considered in both Tasmania and the Northern Territory.

Victoria has resisted introducing similar laws but has walked back its previous commitment to raising the age of criminal responsibility to 14 as a response to the rise in youth crime.

"While young offenders often boast about their crimes online, we know young people get involved in crime for a range of reasons," a spokesperson for Victoria Police said in a statement.

"This includes substance abuse, mental health, family violence and disengagement from family, education, and community."

"As a result, it would be far too simplistic to say social media drives young children to commit crime."

"Police closely monitor social media to obtain intelligence, which often leads to quick arrests."

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