Eating disorders among teenagers have never been this severe or widespread.

Hospitalizations for eating disorders spiked during the pandemic, more than doubling for teenage girls. Even now after the return to in-person activities and classes, anorexia and other disorders are still at an all-time high.

Hospital visits for eating disorders in people 17 and younger jumped from 50,000 in 2018 to 100,000 in 2022, an increase of 107.4 percent, according to data from Trilliant Health. Visits for anorexia, the disorder with the highest death rate of any mental illness, spiked 129.26 percent.

Melissa Freizinger, associate director of the eating disorder program at Boston Children’s Hospital, told NBC that "as the pandemic started and then progressed, we kept thinking, ‘Oh, it’s going to get better in 2022. Oh, it’s going to get better in 2023. But it hasn’t.”

“They’re sicker than before, and they’re more complicated than they were before,” she said. “We all have collective trauma from the pandemic, but many of these kids have PTSD."

Experts say that while hiding eating disorders from friends and family became easier during social isolation, social media also plays a big factor in youth mental health. Platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube have all been the subjects of lawsuits from both parents and school districts over their role in the crisis.

Apart from promoting negative body image, the companies have been accused of something far more insidious — pushing content that promotes self-harm and eating disorders via their algorithms. In the face of the looming lawsuits, YouTube updated its Terms of Service, specifically targeting eating disorder content.

“On April 18, 2023, we updated our Eating disorders policy to better protect the community from sensitive content that may pose a risk to some audiences," the company wrote. "We may remove imitable content, age-restrict content, or show a crisis resource panel on videos about eating disorders or self-harm topics.”