Viewpoint

Exercise in the Era of SkinnyTok

By Annanya Walia

Graphic design by Kevin Trinh

“Is this rage bait?” one user commented under a TikTok video titled “Liv Schmidt is the goal.” Schmidt is a social media influencer who gained virality due to her “What I eat in a day to stay skinny” and “Living slim in the city” videos on TikTok. She is also a brand ambassador for “SkinnyTok,” a social media movement that idealizes thinness. The video, posted by a male influencer, highlights a smaller body type as universally desirable amongst women, promoting unhealthy, culturally reinforced body ideals. 

The video goes on to argue that women fail to achieve these aesthetic ideals due to a lack of discipline. What was intended as a shared sentiment on behalf of women quickly unravelled, as most comments challenged his claims. Yet, this is not the first time such content has drawn backlash online, as Schmidt’s TikTok account was banned in late 2024 after growing criticism for perpetuating unhealthy eating behaviours and unrealistic body standards.1 However, the crackdown on misleading, weight-related content is only a band-aid solution in the age of “biohacking,” a term describing the use of self-experimentation based on anecdotal evidence to optimize physical performance and appearance.

Despite a brief reprieve as body-positivity gained mainstream traction, the pendulum has again swung the other way, with greater emphasis on thinness, evident in trends on SkinnyTok and the growing popularity of GLP-1 medications.2 The pursuit of thinness is increasingly reframed through the language of athleticism, metabolic health and anti-inflammation. The emphasis on thinness is only one manifestation of a broader optimization culture on social media, which promotes multi-step anti-aging routines, restrictive diets, and supplement regimens as pathways to achieve “perfect” health, often with limited or selectively interpreted evidence. Social media has transformed thinness into a medicalized pursuit of health optimization, blurring the boundary between aesthetic ideals and evidence-based wellness.

Social media has increasingly normalized pharmacological methods of achieving aesthetic ideals when discipline and lifestyle-related measures fail. There is a plethora of TikTok anecdotes in which influencers describe their experiences with GLP-1s, claiming these drugs quiet “food noise,” enable “clean eating,” and allow one to “listen to the body’s hunger cues.”  In reality, GLP-1 medications work by quenching appetite without distinguishing between legitimate hunger cues and obsessive food-related thoughts.3 For people with a history of anorexia or malnutrition, these drugs can undo years of progress.4 The problem is not GLP-1 use, as they have been clinically validated to combat obesity and decrease the risk of lifestyle-associated health disorders, but the way that social media portrays these medications as lifestyle enhancements rather than medical interventions.3

The social media discourse on longevity is similar in that it reframes the anti-aging paradigm to be optimization-focused, interlinking medical interventions with lifestyle aspirations. Videos such as those titled “7 ways to live longer” and “Biohacking for women” often promote structured practices including sleep tracking, red light therapy, cold exposure, continuous glucose monitoring and supplement stacking as strategies for lifespan extension.5 The sheer volume of longevity-focused content on TikTok creates the impression that thousands of individuals have decoded the secret to increasing life expectancy, often without any integration of complex aging biology. 

Underlying these prescriptive routines is a recurring theme in which longevity is presented as a proactive, scientific pursuit in contrast to anti-aging, which is viewed as a more cosmetic counterpart. Both concepts converge on similar aesthetic endpoints: markers of youthfulness like lean physiques, smooth skin, and muscular definition. Individuals positioned as “health optimization” experts on social media are rarely evaluated by clinical or physiological health outputs, but by how closely their appearance aligns with the ideals they promote. In this way, the longevity discourse on social media can reduce the complex biological process of aging to visible indicators of youthfulness, effectively merging evidence-based medicine with the medicalization of appearance.

Some physicians have criticized the hyper-optimization of health routines, often referred to as “biohacking,” for reducing health to the pursuit of optimized biological metrics. Doctor Mike, a physician and prominent health educator on YouTube, highlights the contradiction of promoting exercise as essential for health while simultaneously discouraging sports participation or training intensity to avoid injury and to preserve one’s “athletic score.”6 This biohacking mindset restricts exercise primarily for the purposes of maximizing physiological markers rather than as a source of enjoyment, strength or overall wellbeing. In this way, biohacking influencers position aging as a disease and promote routines, practices and products as therapies. On social media, normal physiological processes can be recast into problems requiring continual intervention. As a result, the pursuit of health shifts from maintaining well-being to an ongoing project of self-optimization.7

Health cannot be defined simply by a number on a scale, ever-changing visual standards, or obsessive biometric tracking that is detached from clinical necessity. Clinical measures of health consider functional and physiological capacity, as assessed by body mass index, cardiovascular parameters, oxygen consumption, and metabolic markers, none of which can be inferred solely from appearance.8 Additionally, the optimization-focused culture overlooks a critical determinant of health, which is the psychological burden caused by the constant monitoring, analyzing and disciplining of the body to pursue evolving ideals. 

These social and psychological implications extend beyond the adoption of specific health practices. Compulsivity and perfectionism in health-associated behaviours, whether meal planning, sleep tracking or biomarker optimization, can promote anxiety and social withdrawal.9 Deviating from self-imposed lifestyle restrictions can instigate feelings of failure, further reinforcing compulsive biohacking behaviours. Likewise, maintaining a hyper-optimized, longevity-centric routines can diminish enjoyment in social settings as health-related anxiety dictates everyday choices.9 Within this framework, health becomes an ideal to be relentlessly pursued and perfected, rather than serving to support overall wellbeing.

Despite their potential harm, videos like “Liv Schmidt is the goal” continue to circulate on social media. Although social media platforms now issue disclaimers about disordered eating content, and audiences are increasingly aware of “skinny propaganda,” the discourse itself has not disappeared. Modern wellness culture has reframed beauty as evidence of discipline, optimization and superior health.  In this framing, pseudoscience becomes the guiding logic behind these interventions and is repackaged as a scientific pursuit. In this process, health becomes less about physical and mental wellness and more about performance and physiological perfection.

References

  1. Maheshwari S. Liv Schmidt and the return of skinny culture on TikTok [Internet]. New York (NY): The New York Times; 2024 Sep 20 [cited 2026 Jun 2]. Available from: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/20/style/liv-schmidt-tiktok.html
  2. LaMotte S. What is SkinnyTok and why are experts concerned? [Internet]. Atlanta (GA): CNN; 2025 May 16 [cited 2026 Jun 2]. Available from: https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/16/health/what-is-skinnytok-wellness
  3. Brennan D. Weight-loss drugs: What you should know [Internet]. Rochester (MN): Mayo Clinic; 2025 Aug 14 [cited 2026 Jun 2]. Available from: https://communityhealth.mayoclinic.org/featured-stories/weight-loss-drugs 
  4. Dennis K. GLP-1 medications and eating disorders [Internet]. New York (NY): National Eating Disorders Association; [date unknown] [cited 2026 Jun 2]. Available from: https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/glp-and-eating-disorders/
  5. Charlap S. Getting extra blood tests like biomarkers [Internet]. San Francisco (CA): Medium; 2026 Feb 2 [cited 2026 Jun 2]. Available from: https://medium.com/@scharlap_807/getting-extra-blood-tests-like-biomarkers-9d2129b31462
  6. Doctor Mike. Biohacking is getting out of hand [Internet]. San Bruno (CA): YouTube; 2024 Jul 10 [cited 2026 Jun 2]. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBAwZLxs_OE
  7. Hill A. The troubling rise of longevity fixation syndrome: “I was crushed by the pressure I put on myself” [Internet]. London (UK): The Guardian; 2026 Feb 8 [cited 2026 Jun 2]. Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/feb/08/the-troubling-rise-of-longevity-fixation-syndrome-i-was-crushed-by-the-pressure-i-put-on-myself
  8. Mora S, Redberg RF, Cui Y, Whiteman MK, Flaws JA, Sharrett AR, et al. Ability of exercise testing to predict cardiovascular and all-cause death in asymptomatic women: a 20-year follow-up of the lipid research clinics prevalence study [Internet]. Dallas (TX): American Heart Association; 2000 Sep 26 [cited 2026 Jun 2]. Available from: https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/01.cir.102.13.1591 
  9. Horovitz O, Argyrides M. Orthorexia and Orthorexia Nervosa: A Comprehensive Examination of Prevalence, Risk Factors, Diagnosis, and Treatment. Nutrients. 2023; 15(17):3851. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu15173851