SPECIMEN #2025-D: POVs as Self-Dialogues Across Time: Digital Rituals of Recovery from Diet Culture

• In Event: Digital Ecologies of Hope: A Natural History of Emerging Media Futures

Abstract

This research analyzes how young people use TikTok's point-of-view format to create healing dialogues around food and body image recovery. Through examination of content within protective hashtag formations, this research documents temporal self-communication as therapeutic practice. Creators develop specialized behaviors enabling navigation between past, present, and future self-states, often speaking to child-selves or demonstrating healing progress. These videos function as embodied archives documenting recovery journeys while providing protective techniques for viewers facing similar struggles. Comments reveal community witnessing and mutual support around body liberation. The practice challenges dominant beauty standards while creating novel opportunities for re-parenting and embodied healing. This research contributes to understanding how social media platforms can support recovery from cultural trauma, revealing creative adaptations of digital formats for community care and alternative embodiment possibilities.

Author

• Madison Smith, Teachers College, Columbia University