My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Arunda Bungelung Calcottin woman from Gadigol Country. The Daily oz acknowledges that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the Gadighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island and nations. We pay our respects to the first peoples of these countries, both past and present.
Good morning and welcome to the Daily Os. It's Friday, the fifteenth of September. I'm Emma Gillespie. I'm the deputy editor at The Daily Os.
I'm Nicople, I'm the podcast producer, and of course we're filling in for Sam and Zara, but.
Just for today one day only Friday special. This week, eating disorder survivors and support advocates met with politicians and social media bosses in Federal Parliament. They were there to discuss the relationship between social media and eating disorders and what needs to change.
But when it came to the biggest social media players, there was one pretty noticeable appain.
It was quite concerning that TikTok wasn't there, considering they have over a billion users now and also are really playing a big role in perpetuating disordered eating, buddy image issues and eating disordered behaviors as well.
In today's deep dive, I'm going to speak to Vasha Jajman. She's a youth advocate for mental health and she was there in Parliament yesterday. But one Nina when not far off getting report into the Royal Commission into Disability.
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a bid. The government says this will ensure more Australians can watch the Tillyes World Cup matches for free in twenty twenty seven and into the future.
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Emma, You've got a really interesting chat for us in the deep dive today. I'm keen to get into it, but before we do, I just want to give a heads up that we'll be discussing eating disorders and more specifically some of the triggers that exist for eating disorders in the social media world. So if you don't fill up to listening to that today, this might be one to.
Mess people with lived experience with eating disorders. Survivors advocates met with metabosses at Parliament House in Canbro yesterday, and of course Meta is the parent company of Facebook and Instagram. It coincided with some new research from Melbourne UNI which found TikTok shows over two hundred percent more appearanced based videos, over three hundred percent more videos about dieting, and over three thousand percent more videos about eating disorders to people
with an eating disorder than those without. So to find out what happened at that meeting and what's likely to happen moving forward, I spoke with Vashi Yajman yesterday. She is a youth advocate for mental health and has lived experience with an eating disorder. Vasha, thank you so much for joining us. You've just been in Parliament for this meeting. You've squeezed us into your busy day outside of cafe, so thank you so much for making time. First of all,
how did the meeting go? How are you feeling?
I'm actually feeling pretty good.
It was really great to see all these different people and especially meatow in the same room as parliamentarians and people with lived experience and people who have been doing so much work around eating disorders.
This meeting coincided with new research from the University of Melbourne into TikTok, the algorithm which found, you know, broadly that people with eating disorders are significantly more likely to see appearance related videos, videos about dieting, eating disorder content, exercise content. I wanted to ask you, first of all, what does that content actually look like?
Yeah?
So social media has been part of my eating disorder journey since I was probably like twelve or like was. I really started showing symptimes at fourteen, And it's morphed into different ways.
So when I started out, it was kind of.
YouTube and people being like, this is what I eat in a day, and what I eat in a day is are your main culprit because a lot of them have recently transformed into what I eat in a day in recovery from eating disorder, or what I eat in a day when I eat intuitively, or whatever I want. But in reality, you're still comparing yourself to these really unrealistic standards and it's just morphed into a new light.
You're being sold the exact same content that is eating disorder content of you know, showing photos of people who are really struggling or actually pushing the you know, disordered eating agenda, but now it's being sold to you as the way you should be eating and what health and wellness is, what fitness is like, incredible amounts of protein in your diet that apparently is the way that you're supposed to be eating, exercise routines that are supposed to
be just part of a normal, healthy lifestyle, when it's not actually focusing on the fact that this is a mental disorder. That comparison, it's such a big part of it, and that's why prevention and care in social media is so incredibly important before we get to the point of thinking about things like treatment.
Do you think social media platforms understand their impact in this space, just how much of an impact and influence they have over the young people on their platforms.
I think to some extent they might understand their impact, but I think a lot of the times, and obviously I can't speak directly for them, but it seems like it's just another business model and it's whatever works best, and if that means capitalizing off of millions of people struggling with this big problem, then so be it.
And that's the really frightening.
Bit because it's almost that the norm is to sell you diet culture content, and it's the responsibility of the user to then make decisions not.
To For people who you know, see stories like these studies or hear about, you know, kind of the toxicity of culture on social media platforms, and they say to people struggling, you know, just switch off, delete your account, or block those accounts, or just don't go online, just don't participate in that world. How do you respond to those kind of comments?
Okay, well, I'd say think about it like this. So let's say you have one hundred percent brain capacity and like ninety nine percent of that is taken up by your ating disorder or buy body image of shoes.
You have that one percent left.
That one percent is not thinking about switching off when you're already all consumed by this. And I think a large part of me personally thought that what I was doing was for my own benefit. So it's really hard to distinguish between negative content and positive content, and I think that sometimes missed out. I also think social media is really important because for like, personally, from my experience being a person of color, I didn't have much support around me.
So validating my experience.
Meant turning to social media to actually look for resources, and then when you're being sold content that supposed to benefit your recovery but is actually detrimental.
That's quite terrifying.
So for first nations, queer, people of color communities, social media plays an even bigger role, Le'd say.
So, armed with all that experience of your own and the lived experience of others that you've spoken to and worked with, what was the most important goal of heading to Parliament to meet with these bosses? What was the aim heading into that meeting?
Yeah, well, I think for me it was just really understanding what is being done and also making the point that the accessibility functions is saying not interested, not interested, not interested in all your diet culture content is very mentally trading. I know for myself, going on Instagram and then having to go through these like multiple different settings to censor all of the diet culture content was a lot, and it's something that a lot of people don't know about.
So I think the main goal was to really figure out what's actually being done from these companies and then also making the point that more accessibility around this one needs to be there.
And how did they feedback to that? How was their response? You know, in terms of this idea of the algorithm. Everything we do is sort of so intrinsic to the algorithm online and you see one video, the algorithm thinks you engage in it, so it serves you another one. What was their response to how we even begin to tackle that?
Yeah, so they were talking about a lot of the work that they are doing in partnership with organizations like the Butterfly Foundation should to create resources and educational content, which is really great. But then I think also some really great points that other people made was the fact that a lot of the time the content that we receive isn't even because we're engaging with the content itself,
but purely because it's being sold to us. And then saying that you're not interested in all of this content and trying to set your algorithm up in the best way possible is really difficult.
How do you think these platforms responded to that feedback? Do you think they're open to practical change implementing that or did you feel resistance?
Yeah?
So, coming out of the meeting, there's now going to be a working group steered by the Butterfly Foundation and then also working with Meta to see what we can actually do to make sure that there are more social media protocols. So I think what that looks like exactly
is still being figured out. But having actual solid actions coming out of that meeting felt really really good, because I think, first of all, we're not really talking about eating disorders in parliament ever, and then it's really uncommon to actually have social media.
Giants like Beta part of these conversations.
But I also think just knowing that these platforms do hold such great power and that they should be doing more something to keep in mind, and also that social media is one part of the bigger picture.
At the end of the day.
The amount of funding putting to eating disorders, especially regarding like First nations and communities of color, is.
Really really important to look at.
And social media is a vital world, but providing funding to the greater system such as like healthcare is incredibly important.
And of course you met with bosses from Meta obviously Meta parent company Instagram, Facebook. But the elephant in the room, of course is TikTok. You know, the world's fastest growing social media platform. All that research from UNI Melbourne that we touched on, does that concern you that there wasn't a TikTok representative in the room.
Yeah, it was quite concerning that TikTok wasn't there, considering they have over a billion users now and also are really playing a big role in perpetuating disordered eating buddy image issues and eating disorder behaviors as well, and the way that they aren't really screening the content and selling you content that is supposed to be about health and wellness,
but it's actually just glorifying eating disorders. So I really do think that they should take some ownership and recognize that they hold such a great amount of power and that they do have the resources and the means.
To actually do something about this.
It really shouldn't fall on people who are struggling with the mental illness.
And for people listening who might be struggling either with the needing disorder or in recovery from a needing disorder, where can they go? What are the resources that you want those people to know about.
Yeah, so if you have a support network around you, that's great, turn to that. If not, there's a butterfly eating disorder helpline, And I think just knowing in yourself that what you're feeling is incredibly valid.
If there is a counselor you can talk to. I would say that really.
Is the best step, even if it's just at school or going to your GP and having that conversation.
Thank you so much. We so appreciate your time, and thank you for being so open and vulnerable and sharing with us.
Thank you so much for having me and if you do need help, you can call the Butterfly Helpline on one eight hundred eedy hope that's one eight hundred three three four six seven three, or head to butterfly dot org dot au. Thanks so much for joining us on the daily ours this week. Sam and Sara will be back with you on Monday. Until then, have an excellent weekend.