Self-harm, eating disorders, golly dolls and Bernard Manning: LBC investigates what a 13-year-old sees on TikTok
Teenagers on TikTok are being deluged with videos glorifying eating disorders and encouraging suicide, an LBC investigation has uncovered - despite new laws designed to crack down on such content.
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To test how effectively one of the world’s biggest social media platforms is monitoring dangerous posts, LBC set up two new accounts posing as a thirteen-year-old boy and girl and recorded the content that the algorithm served up.
Chillingly, our teenage girl was soon presented with several videos of young men and women mouthing along to a song with the sickening instruction: “If they say to kill yourself, then you will try it”.
TikTok says it removes 99% of harmful content posted to its platform before it is reported, but it is reviewing the posts highlighted by our investigation.
As part of LBC’s experiment, two fake accounts were created for ordinary teenagers. For Dre Lawson, a thirteen-year-old from Newham with an interest in football and videos, LBC only viewed posts suggested by the algorithm.
Meanwhile, Sophie Leigh-Whittaker, our fictitious teenager from Altrincham, entered one seemingly innocuous search term to nudge her content towards an interest in diet and fitness.
Read more: 'It's harrowing': Inside Ofcom's investigations unit tasked with policing the internet
Shockingly, though, even before searching for this content, Sophie’s feed contained cartoon versions of the offensive golly dolls and sketches of the racist comedian Bernard Manning.
Yet the most disturbing posts appeared shortly after searching “skinny” in the app’s Discover tab.
Within minutes, Sophie’s feed was awash with content glorifying anorexia and making light of bulimia.
Videos included details of how to consume fewer than 500 calories a day, less than a quarter of the recommended intake, posts celebrating the prominent collarbones and pelvises of underweight women, and red beaded bracelets - a common symbol used by the “pro-ana” (pro-anorexia) movement.
In another alarming post, a man responds to a user's comment of “I ate Oreos, I’m sorry” by saying: “In summer, you’re going to wish you went to sleep and never woke up”.
Dre’s account also featured a significant amount of content that was clearly inappropriate for a thirteen-year-old.
This included graphic explanations of sex acts, numerous videos of a young woman simulating a sex act, and others encouraging the supposed health benefits of grabbing a woman’s breasts without emphasising the importance of consent.
The findings raise serious concerns about how effectively one of the world’s biggest platforms is monitoring potentially dangerous content.
The chief executive of the Molly Rose Foundation, an online safety charity set up after the death of fourteen-year-old Molly Russell in 2017, said LBC’s investigation showed the online world was still too dangerous for young people despite the implementation of landmark legislation last year.
“It is shocking that despite the Online Safety Act being in force, TikTok is still promoting inappropriate and harmful content to teens.
“It also raises the question of why, six months on from the law being in force, Ofcom hasn’t investigated one major social media platform for the harm they continue to pose to children.
“Ofcom must be more robust and ambitious, but the consultation into children’s safety online is an opportunity to go much further. We need to strengthen the Online Safety Act and bring in tough new measures that make children’s wellbeing and safety the price these tech companies must pay to do business in the UK.”
In July 2025, Ofcom’s Children’s Codes came into effect, creating a legal responsibility for social media giants like TikTok, Instagram and X to prevent children from accessing harmful content on their platforms.
Under the Online Safety Act, a failure to carry out this responsibility could result in fines of up to £18m or 10% of a company’s global turnover.
With around a quarter of TikTok’s UK users being under the age of seventeen, the removal of such harmful content is a critical question. Around 34 million videos are posted to the platform each day.
It is understood that over 200 million posts that violated TikTok’s guidelines were removed between July and September last year.
But according to Asger Nim, from the Danish non-profit Digital Accountability, there is clear evidence the company fails to prioritise the safety of children who use the platform.
“We have had this discussion for years and years, and we can only ask the question, ‘Why doesn’t TikTok improve in its content moderation or algorithmic systems?’ They have a responsibility, but they choose not to.
“And I believe a very likely hypothesis is that the reason why it keeps amplifying this content is because the user has shown an interest. The platforms care more about continuing user engagement than keeping their users safe - and that is extremely worrying.”
Responding to LBC’s findings, a spokesperson for TikTok said: "Ensuring that TikTok continues to be safe for our community is our most important work, and teen accounts on TikTok have more than 50 preset features and settings designed specifically to support their safety and wellbeing.
“We believe that the best way to tackle online harm is to prevent it from occurring in the first place, and of the content we remove for breaking our rules, 99% is taken down before it is reported to us."
For support with eating disorders, the charity Beat operates a helpline that is open weekdays between 15:00-20:00 as well advice on its website. If you are experiencing suicidal thoughts, the Samaritans can be contacted 24/7 on 116 123.