Visions of recovery: a cross-diagnostic examination of eating disorder pro-recovery communities on TikTok.

ABSTRACT

Individuals seeking support or inspiration for eating disorder recovery may turn to pro-recovery content on social media sites such as TikTok. While research has thus far treated pro-recovery social media as a fairly homogeneous space, many pro-recovery hashtags single out particular eating disorder diagnoses. This exploratory study used codebook thematic analysis of 241 popular pro-recovery videos on TikTok to compare the presentation of eating disorders and eating disorder recovery across five different diagnosis-specific hashtags #anarecovery, #arfidrecovery, #bedrecovery, #miarecovery, and #orthorexiarecovery. These hashtags refer to the following eating disorder diagnoses respectively anorexia nervosa, avoidant restrictive food intake disorder, binge eating disorder, bulimia nervosa, and orthorexia nervosa. Our analysis generated the following qualitative themes across the entire dataset (1) centrality of food to eating disorders and recovery, (2) what eating disorders look and feel like, (3) recovery as a process, (4) getting and giving help, and (5) negotiating diet culture in recovery. To supplement our qualitative findings and facilitate cross-diagnostic comparisons, we also conducted one-way ANOVAs and chi-square tests to probe for statistically significant differences in audience engagement and code prevalence across the different hashtags. Our results indicate that there are clear differences in how recovery is envisioned on TikTok based on which diagnostic hashtags are employed. Such variations in how different eating disorders are imagined on popular social media demand further investigation and clinical consideration.

Hashtags related to eating disorder recovery on TikTok often name particular eating disorder diagnoses. This study compared five of these diagnosis-specific hashtags #anarecovery, #arfidrecovery, #bedrecovery, #miarecovery, and #orthorexiarecovery. We found some similarities among these hashtags such as the centrality of food and eating in the posts and the emphasis on recovery as a process. However, we also found significant differences between the hashtags. For example, while diet culture promotion was a key aspect of many #bedrecovery posts, #orthorexiarecovery posts tended to focus instead on critiques of diet culture. Levels of user engagement also varied across the five hashtags. Notably, #anarecovery posts received the most likes. This study points to the existence of subcommunities within pro-recovery social media and suggests that way eating disorder recovery is portrayed online differs across diagnostic labels.