Body Image Distress and Cyberbullying Among Adolescent Girls in the U.S.

Online discourse about appearance and body image frequently triggers targeted harassment and cyberbullying behaviors on social media platforms. Using text mining, this study examined the prevalence and nature of cyberbullying directed at adolescent girls' body image on TikTok in the U.S. Analysis of 80,954 comments from 50 TikTok videos revealed that non-cyberbullying comments occurred significantly more than expected (92.6%), while cyberbullying represented 7.4% of total interactions. Among cyberbullying behaviors, body shaming dominated responses (41.68%), followed by insults (24.78%) and teasing (21.26%), while comparison attacks, nickname labeling, and clothing/style shaming occurred less frequently. Topic modeling revealed five distinct themes: Appearance Monitoring, Body Commentary, Positive Affirmations, Social Comparison, and Identity Confusion. Sentiment analysis demonstrated predominantly neutral responses, followed by positive sentiment, with negative sentiment constituting the smallest category. These findings demonstrate that while overt cyberbullying remains relatively infrequent due to platform moderation, appearance-focused content creates environments where body shaming becomes the predominant harmful behavior, requiring targeted federal intervention strategies.