A 22-year-old social media influencer, who has been criticised for promoting anorexic behaviour by sharing videos of her promoting dieting and limiting calories, has been banned from TikTok.
Tiktok disabled the account of Liv Schmidt, who had over 670,000 followers, last week after The Wall Street Journal wrote a profile about her. When the publication sought answers from the social media platform about the videos Schmidt posted, the company disabled her account.
However, the influencer was back within days posting videos from a new account.
A TikTok representative told The New York Times that Schmidt’s original account was removed because of violations of community guidelines. "We do not allow showing or promoting disordered eating and dangerous weight loss behaviors, or facilitating the trade or marketing of weight loss or muscle gain products," its guidelines read.
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Return to diet culture
The videos shared by Schmidt have been polarising as they feed into the current online discourse about unhealthy and quick ways to lose weight that can build up to disordered eating, especially in the era of popular weight-loss pills like Ozempic which have quickly become a favourite among celebrities.
{{/usCountry}}The videos shared by Schmidt have been polarising as they feed into the current online discourse about unhealthy and quick ways to lose weight that can build up to disordered eating, especially in the era of popular weight-loss pills like Ozempic which have quickly become a favourite among celebrities.
{{/usCountry}}Before her account was disabled, Schmidt’s videos were criticised for bringing back the diet culture of the early 2000s even amid an ongoing body positivity movement. Schmidt's videos remind of the pro-anorexia or "pro-ana" trend from the early 2000s which sent impressionable women, especially teens, into crash diets.
The Journal said the "skinny influencer" wrote in her TikTok bio: "It’s not a sin to want to be thin".
"Half the time you're not actually hungry"
On her Linkedin, Schmidt says she is a social event coordinator for a private family but on social media the majority of her content revolves around tips to get slim and what to eat to keep your caloric intake down. Her popular “What I Eat in a Day” videos offer unproven diet culture tips like, "Half the time you’re not actually hungry, you’re just literally just thirsty."
For her Wall Street Journal profile, Schmidt, said that she had never struggled with disordered eating but had felt discomfort in her body. She also claimed that she was treated better by society after losing weight.
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Schmidt said that only users above the age of 18 could view her TikTok account and "We all have the option to follow and block any content we want.”
Despite the TikTok ban, Schmidt remains a popular influencer on social media, especially on Instagram, where she has over 68,000 followers. She even runs a community channel called "skinny girl group community chat" where she offers advice and tips for $9.99 per month