“It’s too satisfying that you can’t stop watching”: Understanding preadolescent girls’ engagement with dietary content on TikTok in Israel

This study examines preadolescent girls’ engagement with dietary content on TikTok. Despite expressing minimal intrinsic interest in nutrition or weight control, young users are incidentally exposed to complex dietary discourses ranging from restrictive diet culture to the normalization of overeating. Addressing a gap in the literature on the antecedents of this viewership, we conducted qualitative, semi-structured interviews with 30 girls aged 9–12 and analyzed their interpretations of pre-selected eating behaviors and diet-related videos. Findings reveal that engagement is driven by hedonic and entertainment-oriented mechanisms rather than purposeful information-seeking. Viewership centers on four main hooks: creative inspiration from cooking; sensory gratification from eating videos; social participation and gamification through viral trends and challenges; and voyeuristic curiosity about creators’ lives, stories, and routines. By packaging dietary messages within these appealing formats, TikTok’s content may bypass children’s cognitive defenses, inadvertently exposing them to maladaptive eating behaviors and problematic dietary messages. The research findings emphasize the urgent need for age-sensitive media literacy interventions to foster digital resilience before harmful dietary perceptions and eating behaviors become entrenched.