#Skin-Lightening: A content analysis of the most popular videos promoting skin-lightening products on TikTok

Highly visual and appearance-focused social media often exhibit appearance ideals that center around fairness and whiteness, resulting in the promotion of dangerous over-the-counter skin-lightening products to consumers to achieve such ideals. Our study aims to better understand the skin-lightening claims and products that TikTok users are exposed to on the platform. We conducted a cross-sectional content analysis to examine the top 100 most-viewed videos across the most popular skin-lightening hashtag (#skinlightening) through the TikTok website interface (N = 79) and generated descriptive statistics. Results illustrate that most individuals depicted in videos had a feminine gender expression (72.2 %), lighter skin tones (49.4 %), and were presumably South Asian (e.g., Indian, Sri Lankan) (43.0 %) and African American or Black (30.4 %). Adults ages 25-59 were the largest group depicted (40.5 %). Most videos provided no scientific evidence of efficacy (98.7 %) nor stated the credentials of the influencer promoting the product (88.6 %). The targeting of people of color and women in TikTok videos promoting skin lightening highlights the need for body image researchers and practitioners to assess social media use and its risks relative to skin shade dissatisfaction, as well as calls for platforms to instill community guidelines that prevent the spread of colorist ideals.