1. Budget Ozempic
2023 was the year of weight-loss drugs. With the emergence of Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic and Wegovy and other ‘diabesity’ GLP-1s, the U.S. experienced a true zeitgeist shift in its reckoning with obesity. Not surprisingly, demand surged for the treatments, which were touted by A-listers like Kim Kardashian to Oprah Winfrey.
The hype found its way to TikTok. People desperate to use GLP-1s for weight loss but unable to afford them started seeking cheaper alternatives.
Hence the birth of Budget Ozempic. Videos touting the use of Miralax and other laxatives amassed on TikTok, driving up demand for polyethylene glycol 3350 (the generic name for Miralax). Budget Ozempic’s popularity platform contributed to empty pharmacy shelves and shortages, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Experts noted that water weight loss from laxatives is temporary. But that didn’t stop TikTokers from seeking out other questionable Ozempic alternatives, such as fiber, ketones and berberine.
2. Flying fairy
Like many trends on TikTok, Flying Fairy started out as an innocent joke. Ultimately, however, it ended up spurring essential conversations around suicide ideation.
In the videos, people pretend to float or dangle from the ceiling as whimsical string music plays in the background and a narrator intones, “She was a fairy.” While the clips employ a trick of the eye — participants are actually standing on desks — many were mistakenly interpreted as depicting a person hanging off a rope.
Mental health experts pointed out that the trend could be triggering to individuals who struggle with suicide ideation. “Even in its most innocent form, videos that depict people hanging could be disturbing to some,” Dr. Josh Stein, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at Newport Healthcare’s PrairieCare program, told The New York Post. “This speaks to one of the major challenges of TikTok and social media: Things go live and without awareness of potential consequences or warnings.”
3. Mouth Taping
Mouth Taping videos on TikTok featured people touting the virtues of taping shut their mouths while sleeping. The goal: to encourage nose breathing, which they claimed could help treat insomnia, snoring, high blood pressure and even depression. The trend became so popular that people started taping their mouths shut during runs or other workouts.
In response, medical experts noted that while there are some benefits to breathing through your nose — improved oxygen intake, for instance — mouth taping does nothing to address sleep apnea, insomnia and other real medical conditions. In fact, mouth taping is likely dangerous for people with obstructive sleep apnea or nasal deviations.
4. Free Bleeding
Many women took to TikTot to espouse Free Bleeding, or choosing to avoid tampons, pads or other menstrual products and simply bleed into their clothes or a towel during their period. “Free bleeding is just being on your period and bleeding into nothing,” noted one TikToker. “No pad, no tampon, no underwear, nothing on. You could free bleed many different ways. I like to steal my man’s boxers… I sit on a towel.”
When the trend went viral, its proponents argued that free bleeding is healthier for women than using menstrual products. Experts disagreed, noting the absence of evidence to suggest that it has health benefits. Instead, they called attention to the risks associated with free bleeding — such as exposing other people to period blood, which can carry bloodborne viruses like Hepatitis B or C.
5. Girl Dinner
Following its arrival on TikTok, Girl Dinner transcended social media and permeated the mainstream, opening up conversations around feminism, women’s roles in society, women’s health, nutrition and eating disorders. Media outlets wrote essays about the trend, picking it apart and teasing out supposed deeper meanings.
The trend started out innocently enough, with women showing what they ate when they were free from cooking for kids or a partner. The girl dinners usually consisted of a hodgepodge of items — for example, prosciutto, olives, boiled eggs and instant ramen.
The trend exploded on TikTok, with videos generating thousands of likes and millions of views. It quickly opened up deeper conversations around body image and disordered eating. Some women proudly displayed girl dinners featuring nothing but pretzels and cheese cubes, while others joked that a true girl dinner was an empty plate. Nutritionists and mental health experts reacted by encouraging young women to eat nutritious and protein-rich meals.
6. Flaxseed Masks
In mid-November, TikTok creator Victoria Benitez posted a video in which she mixed water and flaxseed, a fiber-rich seed, to create a skincare mask that could serve as an alternative to Botox. Since then, the video garnered more than six million views and sparked a true craze: Thousands jumped on the trend, claiming that the DIY face mask helped clear up acne and tighten wrinkles.
The flaxseed mask trend highlighted the power skin care has on TikTok, with the hashtag #skincare generating more than 289 billion views. Still, many of the skin-care salves have been debunked by dermatologists, who noted that, for instance, flaxseed doesn’t do much to longer-term effects of aging.
7. Summertime Sadness
Taking its title from a Lana Del Ray song, Summertime Sadness featured TikTokers posting about their anxiety, depression and general sadness during the summer months. While seasonal affective disorder (SAD) is generally associated with winter, when the cold and lack of sunlight affects people’s moods, it can also hit during warmer, sunnier months.
Long summer days bring excessive exposure to sunlight and heat, which can influence mood, sleep and mental health. Summertime Sadness thus influenced the perception of SAD among TikTokers, with posters helping others feel less alone in their struggles.
8. Shadow Work
Shadow Work saw TikTokers turn to the ideas of Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, in the hope that they might be able to identify the subconscious patterns and trauma that would help them unravel their anxiety or depression. The trend stemmed from a book, The Shadow Work Journal, written by a 24-year-old self-help author.
The journal presented itself as a form of self-therapy for readers, with shadow work prompts guiding them along. The author, however, lacked clinical or therapist background, which raised questions about its validity.
TikTokers pushed back in videos claiming that shadow work can exacerbate mental health symptoms. Mental health experts, for their part, responded by advising people to seek the guidance of a trained professional.
9. Bed-rotting
Bed-rotting, in which individuals remain in bed all day as a form of self-care, started as a cheeky joke but evolved into something darker. Proponents of the trend argued that it represents the younger generation’s way of embracing “soft living,” or a more stress-free life.
Critics, however, said bed-rotting can exacerbate existing depression and anxiety. Remaining in bed all day and blowing off everything else, they noted, often could prove a slippery slope into a range of mental health issues. They suggested that people should rest when they need it, but make sure to keep time limits on bed-rotting.
10. Bone-smashing
TikTok’s Bone-smashing trend started with “mewing,” or people trying to keep their tongues at the roof of their mouths to make their jawlines appear sharper. It quickly expanded into actual bone-smashing: hitting one’s face repeatedly with a hammer or other hard object in order to create microfractures and reshape it into something more aesthetically pleasing.
Experts were alarmed, stressing that creating fractures is unsafe and would not result in magical cosmetic rearrangement. If anything, the process would cause the bones to heal abnormally and look far worse.
As often happens on health TikTok, most people quickly realized the insanity of bone-smashing. They then set about joking about the idea.
To read a January 2024 article about Reese Witherspoon and TikTok’s ‘snowcream’ craze, click here.
