Caroline Koziol develops anorexia after TikTok and Instagram algorithm floods feed with extreme dieting content, joins landmark MDL

Summary

Caroline Koziol of Hartford, Connecticut began using Instagram and TikTok during the COVID-19 pandemic to search for at-home workouts and healthy recipes to support her swimming training. Within weeks, both platforms' recommendation algorithms had flooded her feeds with content promoting extreme workouts and disordered eating. 'One innocent search turned into this avalanche,' she said. Koziol, now 21, developed anorexia and is among more than 1,800 plaintiffs in the Social Media Adolescent Addiction/Personal Injury Products Liability MDL suing Meta and TikTok. She is not suing over specific content but over the platforms' defective recommendation design that maximized her engagement and drove her deeper into eating disorder content.