Afraid of aging? A content analysis of TikTok User-Generated Content about #aging and #antiaging

Absztrakt (kivonat)

By 2050, the proportion of people aged 60 and above will double, constituting over 20% of the global population (Wilmoth et al., 2023). However, marginalized portrayal and misrepresentation of elderly women in mass media predominantly associate their value with appearance (Bazzini, 1997), and “anti-aging” marketing campaigns of cosmetics reinforce a desire to reverse or erase signs of aging (Brown & Knight, 2015). Consequently, women are more susceptible to internalized ageism and fear of aging, “gerascophobia”, as a result of societal pressure to retain a youthful appearance (Momtaz et al., 2021). In the past two decades, the development of mobile devices with cameras and visual social media, such as TikTok, which accounts for over one billion active users globally, has allowed new narratives to be disputed about this phenomenon based on User Generated Content (UGC), contributing to public opinion about the phenomenon, especially among youngsters, the main audience on this platform. Therefore, considering attitude change towards aging, the study addresses the question: How is women’s aging depicted on TikTok through UGC? Methodologically, this exploratory research relies on netnography (Kozinets, 2015) and qualitative content analysis (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005), focusing on publicly available UGC, TikTok posts (Omar & Dequan, 2020). To reduce the algorithm influence, a new account is created to collect content under the hashtags #aging (n = 150) and #antiaging (n = 150) based on the highest number of views from November 2023 to January 2024 (N = 300), which is double-coded following a codebook inspired by previous studies and main categories constructed through netnography. The analysis centers on how users discuss aging, supporting or talking against it, besides exploring the main objective of the videos (i.e., inform, entertain, and advertise) and who are the agents promoting the discussion. In this sense, the investigation sheds light on the ways that UGC on TikTok portrays a collective narrative about aging, and reflects social prejudice, such as ageism and gendered ageism.