A scroll through TikTok can quickly turn into a craving.
In a small qualitative study, teenagers described food videos on TikTok as frequently making them hungry or eager to try something they had just seen. But wanting a viral pasta dish, restaurant meal or snack did not necessarily mean they ate it. Whether that happened often depended on more ordinary factors, including what food was available, how much money they had, where they were and whether they could make it themselves.
The findings, published in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, come from four focus groups involving 25 students ages 15 and 16 at one Midwestern high school. Researchers did not track participants’ food intake or experimentally test whether TikTok changed what they ate. Instead, they asked adolescents who regularly used TikTok to describe how food-related content affected them.
Food was hard to escape. Participants talked about seeing recipes, restaurant reviews, advertisements, viral trends, influencer recommendations and “What I eat in a day” videos, usually while scrolling through TikTok’s algorithmically curated For You page.
Those videos sometimes created an immediate urge to eat or seek out the featured food. Novelty mattered, as did seeing many other people trying the same thing.
“The reason why I want to [try the trending food] is because I’m like, ‘why do so many people want to do it, like what’s so good about it?’ so it makes me wanna try it,” one participant said.
How the food looked also mattered. Teens described professional-looking videos, attractive food presentation and favorable comments from other users as factors that could increase their interest. Influencers were persuasive when participants considered them trustworthy, although teens were also sometimes suspicious of creators who were paid to promote products.
“There are these creators that get to do ads for companies and stuff and you can’t trust them cause they lie about everything just to get money, you know?” one participant said. “So like you can’t trust most of them.”
The relationship between TikTok and eating was not as simple as seeing a food and immediately consuming it.
Participants frequently said they could not get the specific food they wanted because it was too expensive, unavailable nearby or simply inaccessible at the moment they saw it. In some cases, they described reaching for whatever snack was available instead. Cooking skills and personal or cultural food preferences also influenced what they did after watching a video.
TikTok also wasn't described exclusively as pushing less nutritious choices. Some teens said videos introduced them to recipes or encouraged foods they considered healthier, such as fruit, vegetables or higher-protein meals. Families sometimes discovered TikTok recipes together and made them at home.
Body-focused content was more complicated. Some participants said they compared themselves with influencers and occasionally changed how they ate based on the body or lifestyle a creator presented.
“So, sometimes I be changing the way I eat,” one participant said. “Because I’ve seen some dudes that are so buff and they have a good body you know and I’m like damn and so I click on his account and see what they’d be eating. And then I sometimes change how I eat, like to try to match it.”
Parents generally weren't deeply involved in participants' everyday TikTok use. But some teens described family interactions that indirectly pulled them away from their screens, including shared meals and time together. Others said parents helped them question diet, body and health claims made online.
One participant recalled learning from their mother that following an influencer's diet wouldn't necessarily produce the same results because people have different bodies and lifestyles.
Those observations don't establish that parental involvement protects teenagers from unhealthy eating or social media influence. The researchers only collected adolescents' perspectives, not information from their parents, and they say future studies would need to test whether those family behaviors actually affect dietary outcomes.
The study has other important limitations. All participants came from a single high school and were specifically recruited because they already used TikTok at least four days a week and had encountered food or eating content there. Focus group discussions can also be influenced by what participants think others want to hear or by particularly vocal members of the group.
At the same time, the sample included adolescents who have often been underrepresented in social media research. The school served a large refugee and immigrant community, and nearly half of participants reported Somali origins. Researchers said including adolescents from racially, ethnically and economically diverse backgrounds was a strength of the study.
For now, the findings provide a window into how teenagers themselves experience an increasingly personalized digital food environment. TikTok may make a particular meal seem irresistible in the moment, but the study suggests what teens actually do next is shaped by much more than the screen in front of them.
The research was supported by the University of Minnesota Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship and the University of Minnesota School of Nursing Foundation Sophia Grant. Time for two researchers was also supported by the Leadership Education in Adolescent Health Fellowship Training Program, funded by the Maternal and Child Health Bureau within the Health Resources and Services Administration at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.