This trend is a product of the recent growth in preteen social media presence, driven by peer pressure and a lack of parental control. Children who frequently use technology and social media prevent themselves from creating important real-life connections and developing social-emotional skills crucial for adulthood. At the same time, they risk addiction, mental health issues and exposure to harmful content.

The ages 9 through 12 bridge the early-childhood and teenage years, and comprise a vital developmental period during which the brain is sensitive to outside influences. During this period, building connections and friendships with peers is essential. According to Mount Saint Mary College psychology professor Paul Schwartz, childhood friendships help develop social skills, including respecting others’ views and understanding conversational etiquette. Friendships also help children build a support system, decreasing their stress and increasing self-esteem.

Children who frequently use social media sites, however, are less likely to build friendships and more likely to have online-only peers, as a study led by research scientist Linda Charmaraman found in 2022. These digital relationships tend to be more superficial and less personal than in-person friendships, and therefore don’t serve as a proper support network. At the same time, preteens are more likely to engage in cyberbullying, and victims are at risk of psychological complications such as anxiety and isolation.

Access to social media has also created an environment that often promotes unrealistic standards. If children believe that their physiques fall short of the artificial image they compare themselves to, for example, they are likely to develop body dissatisfaction and eating disorders, according to a 2022 study headed by research scientist David Bickham. In a 2023 study from the American Psychological Association, adolescents who reduced their social media usage by 50% for a few weeks felt significantly better about their body and appearance.

Furthermore, younger children with unrestricted internet access may stumble upon sexual or violent content, leading them to become desensitized at an early age or to seek out such content of their own accord, as the American Academy of Pediatrics found. The Academy also found that adolescents lack the ability to regulate themselves online compared to adult users.

Parents of preteens can protect their children from the adverse effects of technology usage. To reduce the impact of addictive algorithms, parents should limit their children’s time on devices and prevent them from using certain social media sites, such as Instagram and Snapchat, until they are older. Social media companies must also realize the harm their products have inflicted and revise their policies to keep younger users from accessing their apps, with stricter age verification, better screening of mature content and increased parental-control options. Ultimately, parents must work with their children to minimize the pitfalls of technology so they learn how to use it in a healthy manner.

It has been about a month since the “devious licks” TikTok trend emerged in early September, and although Internet trends usually fade as quickly as they surface, students are still vandalizing school property. Spraying graffiti on the bathroom walls, stealing pencil sharpeners and shattering mirrors have all been widespread acts on campus connected to the trend.

Custodian supervisor Luciano Hernandez says the last substantial lick at Gunn was just last week. “At one point last week, every single soap dispenser from the boys’ bathrooms on campus went missing,” Hernandez said.

According to People Magazine, the “devious licks” trend started when TikTok user @jugg4elias posted a video showing off a box of stolen disposable masks. Since then, the trend has amassed over 19,000 videos, with students stealing ceiling panels in the bathrooms, air conditioning units, fire extinguishers and much more. After receiving backlash online, TikTok restricted every video featuring the buzzwords “stealing,” “devious” and “lick.”

At the height of the trend, Gunn students were not only stealing and spraying graffiti on items in the bathrooms, but also completely destroying them. Sophomore Roni Kurt was dismayed by the damage done in many of the boys’ bathrooms across campus. “They broke the toilet seats, so you can’t sit on the toilet, and [they broke] the mirrors, so you can’t look at yourself in the mirror,” Kurt said. 

By Sept. 15, the vandalism had become such a large issue that all bathrooms on campus were locked after the dismissal bell to deter students from further havoc. Sophomore Edwin Jacqua voiced exasperation at the inconveniences. “It gets old when it’s this continuous,” he said.

Theft and wreckage aside, students have also taken to spraying graffiti or splattering red Kool-Aid onto the walls of the bathrooms. This creates an additional level of maintenance for the custodial staff to handle and requires district intervention. Hernandez explains the process of cleaning up graffiti. “We have to document the graffiti that gets put up, [and] if we cannot clean it, we have to call the district’s managing department so they can come and paint over it,” he said. “It’s so time consuming and very costly because somebody has to come in for two or three hours just to clean or paint over something that’s been vandalized.” 

English teacher Terence Kitada, whose classroom is in the N-building, worries about the effects of this trend on the custodians at Gunn. “The frustration is, somebody has to clean it up,” Kitada said. “I’m friends with the janitors who work in the N-building, Nigel and Nestor. For them, it’s frustrating because they already have extra duties because of the COVID-19 safety protocols. Are the folks who are doing these things thinking about the people whom they’re affecting?”

The licks have N-building custodian Nestor Vidonia frequently restocking items in the bathroom. “It’s very hard,” Vidonia said. “Some teachers are saying, ‘We don’t have soap in this area, in this restroom.’ It’s my duty to check them every day, and when I check them, there’s nothing there.” 

Beyond the disturbance in daily life, theft of sanitary products like hand sanitizer and soap increases the transmission risk of COVID-19, creating other safety concerns. “I can’t go to the bathroom and wash my hands because the soap’s all gone,” Kurt said. “It’s very unsanitary and gross, and because there’s no soap, it makes it difficult to be safe during COVID-19.” 

While bathroom thefts remain common, graffiti has significantly decreased since the start of the trend. In fact, Hernandez comments that last week was graffiti-free. “Last week, there was less vandalism because at some point, there was nothing left to be vandalized,” he said.

On Sept. 30, Principal Wendy Stratton expressed her gratitude to the custodial staff in a Schoology update. “We would like to thank the Custodial Staff for working above and beyond in light of COVID-19 hygiene concerns and the recent vandalism and theft in our campus bathrooms,” she wrote. 

For one, TikTok content is easily digestible. It’s easy to create an account, and an endless stream of videos will appear on a custom-tailored For You page, even if a user doesn’t choose to follow anyone. This For You page is one of the main draws of the app. “This feed is powered by a recommendation system that delivers content to each user that is likely to be of interest to that particular user,” ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, said in a press release explaining the app’s algorithm. “Part of the magic of TikTok is that there’s no one For You feed—while different people may come upon some of the same standout videos, each person’s feed is unique and tailored to that specific individual.”

The “tailored” TikTok algorithm, however, belies a darker reality. In the past, TikTok has admitted to blocking videos created by individuals with facial disfigurements, autism and Down Syndrome from appearing on the For You page. Last year, “The Intercept” published a document given to TikTok moderators advising them on content to restrict: “Abnormal body shape, chubby, have obvious beer belly, obese, or too thin (not limited to: dwarf, acromegaly)” was one rule. “Ugly facial looks (not limited to: disformatted faces, fangs, lack of front teeth, senior people with too many wrinkles, obvious facial scars) or facial disformities (not limited to: eye disorders, crooked mouth disease and other disabilities)” was another.

The justification issued by the company is that such content is highly vulnerable to cyber-bullying and the creator—rather than the content—is the focus of the video. Yet, regardless of intention, the end result is the same: the For You page, the heavily visited and viewed centerpiece of TikTok, defaults to promoting content from skinny, attractive and young creators.

A Narrow Beauty Standard

There’s no better place to witness the beauty standards promoted and perpetuated by TikTok than “content houses,” collaborative groups of popular creators working together to create videos. The Hype House, boasting alumni such as Charli D’Amelio, the most followed creator on TikTok, and Addison Rae, the second most followed creator on TikTok, had a photoshoot with its original 14 members—all of whom were white and fit a narrow, constrained definition of beauty. Similarly, the Sway House, a content house consisting of 16-to 22-year-old boys, is perhaps most well-known for videos of the creators working out without shirts on and showcasing toned abs.

The trickle-down effect? When ordinary teens scroll through their For You page, the uniform beauty standards scream out at them. For senior Hannah Schendel, who herself boasts close to 30,000 followers on TikTok, the repetitiveness is more than noticeable. “Not everyone wants to look like that, but then I feel like seeing it over and over drills it into our minds that that’s what we’re supposed to look like,” she said.

Sophomore Kyle Reyes also experienced a similar feeling after scrolling past the regularly promoted influencers on his For You page. “All the super famous guys, like the Hype House—I feel like they’re all like the same men, in terms of their build and their hair and their race,” he said. “Every day I would see these guys, and they’d have these perfect bodies. It kind of changed my perception of perfect, and I wanted to look like those guys.”

As a result, Reyes recently decided to delete TikTok. Rather than actively taking steps toward diversifying beauty standards that appear on the app, it seems as if TikTok only continues to reinforce a harmful standard on a platform reaching millions.

And, of these millions, it’s the teens who are especially susceptible to self-comparison, according to psychiatrist Maria Daehler. “[Teens] are going through puberty, and sex hormones are creating differences and changes in [their] brains that are causing them to be more aware of their own body,” Daehler said.“There are literally parts of their brains that are changing to be more aware of differences between them and another.”

The popular content that teens witness, for the most part, does not reflect the diversity of bodies in society. “What gives us this standard of beauty doesn’t necessarily tend to be very diverse,” Wellness Outreach Coordinator Rosie Castillo said. “I think it does give us a really tiny perception of what’s beautiful and what’s acceptable and what’s normal, and the folks that deviate from that may not necessarily get as much attention, which is unfortunate because really, [social media] should reflect our society just the way that it looks.”

And it’s not like creators are au naturale on TikTok. Before filming a video on TikTok, digital beauty filters may blur a creator’s skin, erase away any blemishes or pimples, and make thelips appear larger while whitening their teeth and altering their face shape. A clear message is sent: in order to be considered “beautiful,” lips should be bigger, skin clearer and the face skinnier.

Such filters reflect directly on self-esteem. “‘Are we looking at authentic images reflected back of ourselves?’ is a question we have to ask if we have to put the Zoom makeup fixer on our face every morning,” Daehler said. “If I’m putting it on because I think that I need to look better than who I am, that speaks to low self-esteem, and we internalize that more and more.”

Unplugged from Reality

The COVID-19 pandemic, predictably, has only worsened the discrepancy between beauty on TikTok and beauty in reality. When students cannot interact with each other in person, the only main exposure they get to other teenagers is through social media, especially TikTok.

Senior Shira Tamler, a frequent TikTok user, noted how social media has impacted her self-confidence during the pandemic. “I think [TikTok] gives us really unrealistic self-standards and makes us way too hard on ourselves, especially in quarantine, where you do not see people a lot,” Tamler said. “You’re just with yourself, and thinking about how you look. Being on TikTok kind of makes it a little bit worse because you see all these girls, and you see a lot of people saying really mean things about them.”

Hurtful comments and a general lack of empathy online only worsen the problem. When there is something acutely “wrong” with a person, people in comment sections frequently point it out, and bullying has become a frequent problem. “Sometimes I’ll see someone who’s not traditionally or conventionally ‘pretty,’ but then everyone will be very positive in the comments,” Schendel said. “But then, other times, like I remember seeing this one girl and people thought that her eyes were a little bit far apart, so they just kept commenting that on her post.”

It’s not just the creators who are negatively impacted. “Let’s say there’s this guy,” Reyes said. “He has a perfect body and someone comments, ‘Wow, you look weird.’ People are gonna think that’s not a perfect body. Do I have to do even better than that?”

Schendel has noticed a similar effect from TikTok comments. “I think it could definitely have a really bad impact on people’s perceptions of themselves because of other people making negative comments about their appearance,” she said. “They’ll probably think less about themselves and maybe even develop insecurities that maybe they otherwise wouldn’t have had.”

The end result is a strongly negative atmosphere on the app. “It’s inevitable that you’re going to see a bunch of unrealistic beauty standards and people cyber-bullying each other in the comments,” Tamler said. “At this point, it’s so easy for people to bully others on the app that it’s become normalized.”

It’s also harder to view what’s beneath the surface online. According to a BBC survey of female university students, women reported that they tend to compare their own appearance negatively with both their peer group and with celebrities. The comparison group that had the strongest link to body image concerns, however, were the distant peers, or acquaintances.

In other words, women are often aware of that fact that celebrities’ social media posts are heavily edited to appear artificially “perfect,” while it’s already understood close friends don’t have perfect lives, despite what it might look like online. Yet when it comes to the in-between acquaintances, it’s difficult to perceive the extent of editing tools used—and the artificiality of what’s portrayed—making it easier to force a comparison.

While the effect is sometimes subconscious, the constant reinforcement of a certain beauty standard can have a lasting impact on teens’ perceptions of themselves. Castillo frequently interacts with students and, before the pandemic, watched students engage with TikTok. “The way that [TikTok] has been negatively affecting our students is pretty apparent,” Castillo said. “There are mental health issues that stem from cyberbullying and body-image issues because of what they see online.”

One example? “What I Eat in a Day” videos are a common phenomenon in which users on TikTok share often unrealistic diets and unhealthy weight loss methods. “I think it’s promoting a lot of eating disorder behaviors,” Schendel said. “I see really young girls in some comments be like, ‘I’m not gonna eat today because I don’t look like that.’ It’s definitely very concerning.”

Seeing certain body types on social media can create the perception that there’s an ideal body type for teens. “Social media makes it easier for people to see the wide differences in the way that we look,” Castillo said. “The money that you see YouTubers and Instagrammers spend[ing] on altering themselves to look a certain way—it’s like they’re trying to fit into a mold. And when the user can’t, for whatever reason, it creates some distress. We’ve
seen definitely an increase [of distress], and it’s widespread.”

With each passing year, it seems, the age at which children are first exposed to social media becomes younger and younger. On these platforms, kids have access to content past generations certainly never had, but there’s also an immense pressure that their parents didn’t feel. “When [our parents] were our age they got to live more in the moment, and they didn’t have to worry about looking a certain way over social media,” Tamler said.

Part of the pressure adolescent creators feel is to look the way popular, older influencers look, resulting in a skewed perception of what behaviors and appearances are “normal” for any given age group. “There are 13-year-olds who look like they are 20 [on TikTok].” Schendel said. “That is weird for me because I am 17, but I don’t even look like that. So how does a 13-year-old look like that?”

Creating New Movements

In the face of all this, new movements are striving to promote different and diverse beauty standards; there has been an increase in social media influencers gaining popularity for their body positivity videos and posts. 16-year-old Sienna Mae Gomez, for example, is known for showing videos of herself after eating, when she’s bloated, or for squishing parts of her body that women are traditionally insecure about—such as stomach rolls and cellulite—in an attempt to normalize such features. Other creators such as Victoria Garrick, a former Division I athlete, frequently discuss taboo subjects about women’s bodies, including counting calories and an “intuitive eating” approach.

Body positivity activists, such as pop singer Lizzo, have also posted videos of their bodies in their natural state to challenge the idea of the “perfect body.” Lizzo recently made a video displaying her body at all angles, discussing her struggles with body positivity and encouraging viewers to accept themselves, no matter their size. “I’m so proud of you for making it this far in a society that gives us a headstart into self-loathing, that hands us a dysmorphic mirror and leaves us desperate to catch up with who we think we should be,” she said.

Besides individual creators, some brands have also shown their support for more inclusive beauty standards. For example, Dove has committed to “always feature real women, never models” in their ads, and launched the Dove Self-Esteem Project, aimed at educating the next generation on body confidence. The American Eagle brand Aerie has also made steps toward promoting women of all body types in their ads and has pledged to no longer airbrush their models.

Daehler thinks that campaigns like these provide a more hopeful outlook for teens.“The more that [girls] click and look at social media, they tend to have a lower sense of [body-image],” she said. “But there are some studies that are suggesting that the way the body is presented on social media can counteract some of that. So, instead of just blocking social media or blocking teens from seeing social media, show multiple different types of bodies and focus more on women’s personality and their intellect and not objectify them so much in terms of just their physical appearance.”

Even though body positivity content is hardly the focus of TikTok—while Gomez has amassed over 14.5 million followers in the last few months and Garrick has 703,000, these numbers are only a fraction of Charli D’Amelio’s 108 million—the steps being made by these creators and brands are showing that there is push for a more diverse idea of beauty on social media.

As for TikTok, viewers are urging the app to highlight all types of creators. “TikTok should promote different body types, different races and pull away from the current standard that’s set in stone,” Reyes said. “What they’re doing right now with only putting muscular, white guys or skinny white girls on the For You pages, is not [acceptable]. They definitely should pull away from that and promote more diverse people in terms of skin, race, body type and content.”

For one, TikTok content is easily digestible. It’s easy to create an account, and an endless stream of videos will appear on a custom-tailored For You page, even if a user doesn’t choose to follow anyone. This For You page is one of the main draws of the app. “This feed is powered by a recommendation system that delivers content to each user that is likely to be of interest to that particular user,” ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, said in a press release explaining the app’s algorithm. “Part of the magic of TikTok is that there’s no one For You feed—while different people may come upon some of the same standout videos, each person’s feed is unique and tailored to that specific individual.”

The “tailored” TikTok algorithm, however, belies a darker reality. In the past, TikTok has admitted to blocking videos created by individuals with facial disfigurements, autism and Down Syndrome from appearing on the For You page. Last year, “The Intercept” published a document given to TikTok moderators advising them on content to restrict: “Abnormal body shape, chubby, have obvious beer belly, obese, or too thin (not limited to: dwarf, acromegaly)” was one rule. “Ugly facial looks (not limited to: disformatted faces, fangs, lack of front teeth, senior people with too many wrinkles, obvious facial scars) or facial disformities (not limited to: eye disorders, crooked mouth disease and other disabilities)” was another.

The justification issued by the company is that such content is highly vulnerable to cyber-bullying and the creator—rather than the content—is the focus of the video. Yet, regardless of intention, the end result is the same: the For You page, the heavily visited and viewed centerpiece of TikTok, defaults to promoting content from skinny, attractive and young creators.

A Narrow Beauty Standard

There’s no better place to witness the beauty standards promoted and perpetuated by TikTok than “content houses,” collaborative groups of popular creators working togetherto create videos. The Hype House, boasting alumni such as Charli D’Amelio, the most followed creator on TikTok, and Addison Rae, the second most followed creator on TikTok, had a photoshoot with its original 14 members—all of whom were white and fit a narrow, constrained definition of beauty. Similarly, the Sway House, a content house consisting of 16-to 22-year-old boys, is perhaps most well-known for videos of the creators working out without shirts on and showcasing toned abs.

The trickle-down effect? When ordinary teens scroll through their For You page, the uniform beauty standards scream out at them. For senior Hannah Schendel, who herself boasts close to 30,000 followers on TikTok, the repetitiveness is more than noticeable. “Not everyone wants to look like that, but then I feel like seeing it over and over drills it into our minds that that’s what we’re supposed to look like,” she said.

Sophomore Kyle Reyes also experienced a similar feeling after scrolling past the regularly promoted influencers on his For You page. “All the super famous guys, like the Hype House—I feel like they’re all like the same men, in terms of their build and their hair and their race,” he said. “Every day I would see these guys, and they’d have these perfect bodies. It kind of changed my perception of perfect, and I wanted to look like those guys.”

As a result, Reyes recently decided to delete TikTok.

Rather than actively taking steps toward diversifying beauty standards that appear on the app, it seems as if TikTok only continues to reinforce a harmful standard on a platform reaching millions.

And, of these millions, it’s the teens who are especially susceptible to self-comparison, according to psychiatrist Maria Daehler.“[Teens] are going through puberty, and sex hormones are creating differences and changes in [their] brains that are causing them to be more aware of their own body,” Daehler said.“There are literally parts of their brains that are changing to be more aware of differences between them and another.”

The popular content that teens witness, for the most part, does not reflect the diversity of bodies in society. “What gives us this standard of beauty doesn’t necessarily tend to be very diverse,” Wellness Outreach Coordinator Rosie Castillo said. “I think it does give us a really tiny perception of what’s beautiful and what’s acceptable and what’s normal, and the folks that deviate from that may not necessarily get as much attention, which is unfortunate because really, [social media] should reflect our society just the way that it looks.”

And it’s not like creators are au naturale on TikTok. Before filming a video on TikTok, digital beauty filters may blur a creator’s skin, erase away any blemishes or pimples, and make the lips appear larger while whitening their teeth and altering their face shape. A clear message is sent: in order to be considered “beautiful,” lips should be bigger, skin clearer and the face skinnier.

Such filters reflect directly on self-esteem. “‘Are we looking at authentic images reflected back of ourselves?’ is a question we have to ask if we have to put the Zoom makeup fixer on our face every morning,” Daehler said. “If I’m putting it on because I think that I need to look better than who I am, that speaks to low self-esteem, and we internalize that more and more.”

Unplugged From Reality

The COVID-19 pandemic, predictably, has only worsened the discrepancy between beauty on TikTok and beauty in reality. When students cannot interact with each other in person, the only main exposure they get to other teenagers is through social media, especially TikTok. Senior Shira Tamler, a frequent TikTok user, noted how social media has impacted her self-confidence during the pandemic. “I think [TikTok] gives us really unrealistic self-standards and makes us way too hard on ourselves, especially in quarantine, where you do not see people a lot,” Tamler said. “You’re just with yourself, and thinking about how you look. Being on TikTok kind of makes it a little bit worse because you see all these girls, and you see a lot of people saying really mean things about them.”

Hurtful comments and a general lack of empathy online only worsen the problem. When there is something acutely “wrong” with a person, people in comment sections frequently point it out, and bullying has become a frequent problem. “Sometimes I’ll see someone who’s not traditionally or conventionally ‘pretty,’ but then everyone will be very positive in the comments,” Schendel said. “But then, other times, like I remember seeing this one girl and people thought that her eyes were a little bit far apart, so they just kept commenting that on her post.”

It’s not just the creators who are negatively impacted. “Let’s say there’s this guy,” Reyes said. “He has a perfect body and someone comments, ‘Wow, you look weird.’ People are gonna think that’s not a perfect body. Do I have to do even better than that?”

Schendel has noticed a similar effect from TikTok comments. “I think it could definitely have a really bad impact on people’s perceptions of themselves because of other people making negative comments about their appearance,” she said. “They’ll probably think less about themselves and maybe even develop insecurities that maybe they otherwise wouldn’t have had.”

The end result is a strongly negative atmosphere on the app.“It’s inevitable that you’re going to see a bunch of unrealistic beauty standards and people cyber-bullying each other in the comments,” Tamler said. “At this point, it’s so easy for people to bully others on the app that it’s become normalized.”

It’s also harder to view what’s beneath the surface online. According to a BBC survey of female university students, women reported that they tend to compare their own appearance negatively with both their peer group and with celebrities. The comparison group that had the strongest link to body image concerns, however, were the distant peers, or acquaintances.

In other words, women are often aware of that fact that celebrities’ social media posts are heavily edited to appear artificially “perfect,” while it’s already understood close friends don’t have perfect lives, despite what it might look like online. Yet when it comes to the in-between acquaintances, it’s difficult to perceive the extent of editing tools used—and the artificiality of what’s portrayed—making it easier to force a comparison.

While the effect is sometimes subconscious, the constant reinforcement of a certain beauty standard can have a lasting impact on teens’ perceptions of themselves. Castillo frequently interacts with students and, before the pandemic, watched students engage with TikTok. “The way that [TikTok] has been negatively affecting our students is pretty apparent,” Castillo said. “There are mental health issues that stem from cyberbullying and body-image issues because of what they see online.”

One example? “What I Eat in a Day” videos are a common phenomenon in which users on TikTok share often unrealistic diets and unhealthy weight loss methods. “I think it’s promoting a lot of eating disorder behaviors,” Schendel said. “I see really young girls in some comments be like, ‘I’m not gonna eat today because I don’t look like that.’ It’s definitely very concerning.”

Seeing certain body types on social media can create the perception that there’s an ideal body type for teens. “Social media makes it easier for people to see the wide differences in the way that we look,” Castillo said. “The money that you see YouTubers and Instagrammers spend[ing] on altering themselves to look acertain way—it’s like they’re trying to fit into a mold. And when the user can’t, for whatever reason, it creates some distress. We’ve seen definitely an increase [of distress], and it’s widespread.”

With each passing year, it seems, the age at which children are first exposed to social media becomes younger and younger. On these platforms, kids have access to content past generations certainly never had, but there’s also an immense pressure that their parents didn’t feel. “When [our parents] were our age they got to live more in the moment, and they didn’t have to worry about looking a certain way over social media,” Tamler said.

Part of the pressure adolescent creators feel is to look the way popular, older influencers look, resulting in a skewed perception of what behaviors and appearances are “normal” for any given age group. “There are 13-year-olds who look like they are 20 [on TikTok].” Schendel said. “That is weird for me because I am 17, but I don’t even look like that. So how does a 13-year-old look like that?”

Creating New Movements

In the face of all this, new movements are striving to promote different and diverse beauty standards; there has been an increase in social media influencers gaining popularity for their body positivity videos and posts. 16-year-old Sienna Mae Gomez, for example, is known for showing videos of herself after eating, when she’s bloated, or for squishing parts of her body that women are traditionally insecure about—such as stomach rolls and cellulite—in an attempt to normalize such features. Other creators such as Victoria Garrick, a former Division I athlete, frequently discuss taboo subjects about women’s bodies, including counting calories and an “intuitive eating” approach.

Body positivity activists, such as pop singer Lizzo, have also posted videos of their bodies in their natural state to challenge the idea of the “perfect body.” Lizzo recently made a video displaying her body at all angles, discussing her struggles with body positivity and encouraging viewers to accept themselves, no matter their size. “I’m so proud of you for making it this far in a society that gives us a headstart into self-loathing, that hands us a dysmorphic mirror and leaves us desperate to catch up with who we think we should be,” she said.

Besides individual creators, some brands have also shown their support for more inclusive beauty standards. For example, Dove has committed to “always feature real women, never models” in their ads, and launched the Dove Self-Esteem Project, aimed at educating the next generation on body confidence. The American Eagle brand Aerie has also made steps toward promoting women of all body types in their ads and has pledged to no longer airbrush their models.

Daehler thinks that campaigns like these provide a more hopeful outlook for teens.“The more that [girls] click and look at social media, they tend to have a lower sense of [body-image],” she said. “But there are some studies that are suggesting that the way the body is presented on social media can counteract some of that. So, instead of just blocking social media or blocking teens from seeing social media, show multiple different types of bodies and focus more on women’s personality and their intellect and not objectify them so much in terms of just their physical appearance.”

Even though body positivity content is hardly the focus of TikTok—while Gomez has amassed over 14.5 million followers in the last few months and Garrick has 703,000, these numbers are only a fraction of Charli D’Amelio’s 108 million—the steps being made by these creators and brands are showing that there is push for a more diverse idea of beauty on social media.

As for TikTok, viewers are urging the app to highlight all types of creators. “TikTok should promote different body types, different races and pull away from the current standard that’s set in stone,” Reyes said. “What they’re doing right now with only putting muscular, white guys or skinny white girls on the For You pages, is not [acceptable]. They definitely should pull away from that and promote more diverse people in terms of skin, race, body type and content.”

    For girls, the most common occurrences are cutting bangs or dying their hair. For guys, you may see some shaved heads, and maybe even a mullet or two. And really, there’s no better time to try that hairstyle you’ve always wanted than now. Think about it: no one will see you until  quarantine is over, and that’s seeming like longer every day. That means you don’t have to be worried if it will look good or not, or if your friends will judge you or not. Do what you want because there are absolutely no consequences and nothing to be ashamed of. Girls, see what you would look like with bangs, guys, get a mullet. The time to try new things is now.

    Especially if you’re a worrier or an over thinker, now is the time to be impulsive. Waking up and seeing you have green hair can give you that rush of confidence that you need to drag yourself through the million ROLEs that your teachers have assigned. Make reckless decisions because nothing bad can come of them. And when you’re older, you can look back and say, “I made spontaneous decisions; I lived in the moment.”

       The rise of this drink’s popularity can be attributed to its simplicity and aesthetics. To make the drink, all you need is instant coffee, hot water, sugar and milk. By beating equal portions of instant coffee, hot water and sugar with a whisk or mixer, the “whipped” part of the drink is made. The whipped mixture is then topped over a glass of milk to create a beautiful drink, with the milk on the bottom and cream floating above the milk. After snapping some “artsy” photos and posting on social media, the cold, delicious beverage can be mixed into a single substance and becomes ready to drink.