Lockdown Kids: Inside the troubling rise of TikTok-fuelled anorexia

It all started as an innocent attempt to get healthier but it took three months for Katya to almost die from anorexia nervosa at just 13 years old.

MELBOURNE, 7 MARCH, 2025: Katya Jaski speaks to eating disorders. Picture: Mark Stewart

Katya Jaski set herself a goal during lockdown. Instead of wasting the long days in isolation, she was going to use the time to get fit and healthy.

The first stop was TikTok. After searching through hashtags like #fitspo and #fitness, endless videos surfaced.

A steady rotation of picture-perfect fitness influencers sharing step-by-step guides on what to eat and how to work out to get the perfect body.

Katya initially thought it was all pretty positive. After all, what could be sinister about making healthy lifestyle changes?

But at just 13-years-old, it wasn’t long before she became obsessed. Obsessed with her body; obsessed with how much she was eating; obsessed with exercise.

In less than a month, she went from a bubbly outgoing teenager to surviving on just one small meal a day.

“There were a lot of social media trends about using the opportunity of having a lockdown to get fitter and get healthier,” Katya, now 18, explains.

“I was someone who was struggling with friendship opportunities (in lockdown) and was struggling to find a place for myself.

“I thought that maybe if I looked a bit better and I was a bit fitter, that people would like me more.”

Watch Katya share her story in episode three of Lockdown Kids: How To Break a Generation

Katya shared her experience of being in hospital with anorexia during the lockdown. Picture: Supplied

Katya in hospital for treatment for anorexia. Picture: Supplied

This week marked the five-year anniversary of Melbourne going into its first lockdown, and Katya opened up about her harrowing experience for The Advertiser’s new docu-series Lockdown Kids: How To Break a Generation.

The four-part series delves into the long-term impacts of placing the nation’s children into lockdown, including a rise mental health issues, a startling drop in school attendance and the shocking realities of spiking anorexia rates.

A TikTok spokesperson said they do not allow content that “depicts, promotes, normalises, or glorifies eating disorders”.

“If someone searches for this type of content on TikTok, they are redirected to support services, including the Butterfly Foundation,” the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson added that users under 18 have a daily screen time limit of 60 minutes automatically applied to their accounts.

For Katya, she can now reflect that at the heart of her eating disorder was the need to control something, anything really, in an out-of-control pandemic-gripped world.

She had just entered Year 8 at Star of the Sea College in Brighton, was excited about a new school year and the opportunity to make friends but instead was faced with long stretches alone.

“I definitely think that this need for control was so exacerbated by the lack of control I had in every other area of my life at the time,” she explained. “What I could control was my exercise and my intake.”

And feeding her obsession was the TikTok algorithm.

“The longer you look at a video, the more TikTok will show you those types of videos,” Katya explained.

Katya as a young girl admits she had a healthy appetite and never worried about weight. Picture: Supplied

Katya at the height of her illness, where she was hospitalised and almost died. Picture: Supplied

A TikTok spokesperson said users can completely reset their feed, if they “feel like they’re seeing too much of anything”.

“Our Family Pairing tools also put parents and guardians in control of their teens’ accounts, including how much time their teen spends online, and the type of content they can see,” the spokesperson said.

But for Katya, her obsession almost became deadly. In November 2022, her body started to shut down due to a lack of nutrients and the muscle around her heart was depleting.

She was hospitalised, trapped in a large ward with a group of young girls who were all united in battling the same disease.

“It can be really harmful to just have a group of girls in the same room with the same illness who are also competitive, because it ends up just being this massive competition,” she explained.

“If you see somebody across the room who’s trying to get up and stand and walk around without the nurses watching, you’ll start to do that as well, because she’s now getting more steps in than you and so now you have to start doing that, because otherwise she’s better than you.

“It’s just this really sick and twisted way of thinking.”

Katya was hospitalised and almost lost her life to anorexia. Picture: Supplied

Katya admits she's already lost many friends to anorexia. Picture: Supplied

Katya is now healthy and happy but admits she has to keep her eye on how she is thinking about food and her body. Picture: Mark Stewart

With the help of family, Katya is now in recovery but admits that even today the disease is still there, just lingering, and that’s what scares her. The possibility she may relapse, she may undo all the hard work she has put in.

She tries to keep her friend Liv in her mind. She died at just 15 after the pair met in hospital when they were both battling anorexia.

So does she feel a sense of anger at the lockdowns? In short, yes.

“It really did rob me of those years, not just because of the lockdown but what else it brought on me, of my illness and all of these problems that were just exacerbated by the lockdown,” she said.

“I would say that I would have been a very different person today if I had had those formative years of my life and able to experience them like a normal teenager would be able to without this illness.”

Have you or anyone you know been impacted by the Covid lockdowns? You can share your story by clicking this form.

Coming tomorrow. Lockdown Kids: How To Break a Generation delves into the startling rise of youth crime.

Originally published as Lockdown Kids: Inside the troubling rise of TikTok-fuelled anorexia