Those concerns came into sharp focus in recent weeks in a pair of Senate subcommittee hearings: the first featuring a Facebook executive defending her company, and the second featuring a former Facebook employee turned whistle-blower who bluntly argued that her former employer’s products drove some young people toward eating disorders.

They are expected to face questions about how they moderate content that might encourage disordered eating, and how their algorithms might promote such content.

However, it can contribute to an eating disorder,” said Chelsea Kronengold, a spokeswoman for the National Eating Disorders Association.

The association advises social media companies to remove content that explicitly promotes eating disorders and to offer help to users who seek it out.

But young people have formed online communities where they discuss eating disorders and swap tips for the best ways to lose weight and look skinny.

Experts say that fitness influencers in particular can often serve as a funnel to draw young people into extreme online eating disorder communities.

YouTube, Snapchat, TikTok and Twitter have policies prohibiting content that encourages eating disorders.

While some viewers flock to her social media profiles on YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and the streaming service Twitch to beg her to seek treatment, others have accused her of using her platform to promote eating disorders to young people.

They say her videos are examples of “body checking,” a habitual behavior of reviewing the appearance of one’s body that is often associated with eating disorders.

Last year, TikTok began cracking down on content that explicitly encourages eating disorders and blocking some hashtags that promote disordered eating.

Despite efforts to hide harmful content, some content that promotes eating disorders is still available.

But searching for phrases like “anorexia” prompts the app to offer a phone number for the National Eating Disorders Association instead of any videos.

TikTok said that it, too, tried to differentiate videos of people sharing their personal experiences from more harmful content that promoted unhealthy behavior.

“We aim to foster a supportive environment for people who share their recovery journey on TikTok while also safeguarding our community by removing content that normalizes or glorifies eating disorders,” Tara Wadhwa, TikTok’s director of U.S.

Twitter said that its policies prohibit content that promotes eating disorders or provides instructions or strategies for maintaining them, and that the company primarily relies on users to report violative content.

Levina, the TikTok creator, said she did not think she needed to moderate her content to avoid influencing young people to start unhealthy behaviors.

Khadijah Booth Watkins, the associate director of the Clay Center for Young Healthy Minds at Massachusetts General Hospital, said that young people are especially impressionable, so content creators should consider that they could be swaying teenagers into making dangerous health choices

If you or a loved one is struggling with an eating disorder, contact the National Eating Disorders Association help line for support, resources, and treatment options at (800) 931-2237