Adolescents and young adults are some of the most impressionable groups of people, so a seemingly innocent trend going viral is bound to influence those groups of people.
In May 2023, TikTok user Olivia Maher posted a video to the platform showing off her dinner. Her meal consisted of bread, cheese, pickles, grapes and wine. She gave her meal the name “girl dinner.” User Karmapilled decided to jump on the trend, and the audio in her video has since been used in over 420,000 videos. Early videos of the trend showed users displaying their weird or unusual food combinations. Some of these meals included macaroni and cheese out of wine glasses with dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets, homemade nachos and noodles with cheese and corn.
However, as it is with most trends, there were also users who made the trend negative. Users show off meals that are more like snacks, and some users even promote eating little food rather than a full meal. Things like a small plate of strawberries, a cookie and three chicken nuggets or a cucumber and bowl of potato chips became more normalized within the trend.
According to an article on eating disorders by the National Institute of Mental Health, eating disorders are “serious and often fatal illnesses that are associated with severe disturbances in people’s eating behaviors and related thoughts and emotions.” The article reports that although all age groups can be affected by eating disorders, they mostly affect teens and young adults.
School nurse Renee Weidlich recommends students eat three times a day, and make sure their meals include a fruit/vegetable, whole grains and protein. Calcium is also one of the most important things a student should make sure to include in their meals due to the long term benefits it has. Calcium is not only found in milk, but also cheese, yogurt and some vegetables.
“When a student doesn’t eat, you can have lower test scores, your concentration is lower, you have more attendance issues and, when you don’t eat properly, your body doesn’t function properly, and that includes your brain,” Weidlich said.
Social media has also had an undeniable impact on students’ mental health, likely due to the popularity of toxic trends. Trends don’t always start off toxic, but for trends like “girl dinner,” they can become toxic over time.
“Adolescence is a time of great change physically, mentally and emotionally to begin with,” guidance counselor Tracey Biesecker said. “Social media can be good or it can be negative, but it’s hard enough to navigate those years on a good day without social media, and it’s not always possible to regulate some of that use so that it’s not so overwhelming.”
When a student is struggling with their mental health, it can also affect their performance. According to Biesecker, students struggling with their mental health can also struggle to focus and concentrate, which can affect their performance in school. Students struggling with their mental health are also more likely to have issues with their attendance.
Biesecker encourages people struggling with their mental health to reach out and ask for help.
“Let an adult know,” Biesecker said. “Depending on the circumstances, students aren’t always comfortable reaching out at home. If it’s something the student is comfortable doing, come and see their counselor. Or, let a teacher or principal know, and they can let us know, and we can help them navigate support systems in or outside of school. The biggest thing is to communicate that and not hold in how they’re feeling.”
