Modern-day celebrities are bringing back extreme dieting culture similar to practices from the 2000s, and college students are taking notice.
Young people pursuing college degrees already face the endless pressure of looking like somebody else’s idea of glamour, as they are constantly comparing themselves to their favorite influencers.
Now, many of the same celebrities who once encouraged them to embrace their bodies despite social pressure seem to have given in to it themselves.
In the 2000s, impressionable young people watched in fascination as celebrities like Lindsay Lohan, Nicole Richie and Kate Bosworth became emaciated versions of themselves.
Now, in a seemingly post-body positivity era, this has continued with worrisome photos of increasingly thin celebrities like Ariana Grande, Demi Moore and Kelly Osbourne to name a few.
This means that young people are once again facing extreme pressures to lose as much weight as possible to achieve the new beauty standards, and it’s putting college students at risk.
The prescription glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) drug known as Ozempic was originally meant to help regulate blood sugar levels in people with diabetes. In 2023, it swept the nation because of its weight-loss side effects.
Access to Ozempic has since been limited, but that hasn’t stopped demand for alternative GLP-1 drugs. In fact, it’s gotten even higher, leading to the silent return of celebrities who look like skin and bones while calling it ‘peak health.’
What makes the current wave of extreme thinness especially concerning is how differently it is being marketed to young people compared to the 2000s.
During the “heroin chic” era, unhealthy beauty standards were often blunt and obvious. Today, extreme thinness is frequently disguised as “wellness,” “self-improvement” or “clean living.”
Social media users are flooded with content promoting restrictive eating, appetite-suppressing habits and rapid weight loss under the language of discipline and health.
As a result, dangerous body standards can become harder to recognize. Instead of openly glorifying being skinny, online culture now often presents extreme thinness as evidence of success, productivity and self-control.
Older adults are not immune to these harmful messages. However, professionals are especially concerned about college students, who are already struggling under the pressures to look as glamorous as their favorite social media influencers.
Michelle Fino, professor of Nutrition and Dietetics at Long Beach City College, expressed concern about how these trends may affect students.
“The unrealistic ideals, you know, comparing themselves to other people and celebrities, is not healthy,” Fino said. “It’s stressful in a way that could contribute to their low self-esteem, especially at a time when many students are working on finals or getting ready to graduate.”
Recent research on disordered eating paints a similarly worrisome picture. According to the August 2025 issue of the Journal of Eating Disorders in a study of Norwegian university students, eating disorders increased significantly with gender-diverse students exhibiting the highest rates.
Combined with the influence of modern-day social media, these pressures are gearing young people toward poorer self-image, low self-confidence and a higher need to fit someone else’s idea of beauty by any means necessary.
Fino suggested that a solution might lie in college students decreasing how much time they spend on social media and looking at images of celebrities.
But every day that gets harder and harder to do when so much of keeping in contact with friends and family, connecting with the community and sometimes even finding work, requires constantly following up with one’s social media notifications.
The unhealthy dieting practices of celebrities in the 2000s caused an increase in disordered eating among teenagers and young adults, even before the rise of visual platforms like Instagram and TikTok.
Researchers are still trying to understand the long-term effects that today’s algorithm-driven beauty standards and diet culture are having on modern-day college students.
Although completely disconnecting from social media may not feel realistic for many college students, that does not mean users are powerless against the algorithms shaping modern beauty standards.
Many social media platforms are designed to show users more of the content they already engage with. That means students can actively reshape their feeds by following creators who promote healthier body image, muting harmful content and spending less time interacting with posts centered around extreme weight loss and unrealistic beauty standards.
The same algorithms that can push harmful messaging onto young people can also be retrained by users to prioritize healthier and more realistic content.
