Websites Promoting Eating Disorders

September 3rd, 2010 | Add a Comment

Eating disorders are no joke, and today’s world is working hard on providing resources for getting help with this disorder. As we all know, suffering from bulimia or anorexia can be fatal. That is why there are websites or treatment centers to help. Having resources available online allows the user to be in complete privacy and learn more about the disorder as well as get outside help.

Also there are people who turn away from the recovery sites. They go to the pro-eating sites that promote eating disorders. The Internet world classifies these websites as “Pro-Ana” (pro-anorexia) and “Pro-Mia”(pro-bulimia).These websites provide extreme dieting, exercise tips, and dangerous weight loss secrets all designed to help readers look skeletal or be extremely thin. Most of the sites promote “thinspiration”, a term used to describe the graphic images of models, celebrities, and regular people that help promote readers in their journey of weight-loss.

According to the National Eating Disorder Awareness Association(NEDA), a national organization that puts time and effort into the prevention, treatment and awareness of eating disorders, states through their study that Pro-Ana/-MIA websites outnumber pro-recovery sites at a ration of 5 to 1. That is a rough estimate but still, WOW! The Pro-Ana/-Mia websites started up on the Internet in the year of 2001. Yahoo! and many other site hosts started extinguishing existing Pro-Ana/-Mia sites as well as new ones. Even though Yahoo! and the other sites were trying to shut down these horrible sites, they still managed to pop up everywhere.

NEDA states,” The sites show pictures of very thin supermodels, or ‘thinspiration’ intended to invoke the desire to lose more weight. They encourage the behavior through chat rooms, poems, weigh-loss diaries and personal stories. Although most of these sites give explicit warning that they are Pro-Ana or Pro-Mia and may contain triggers for relapse, it is still very important to be aware of them, because they may pose a threat to anyone who is in recovery. Many of these sites are transient, and new ones emerge as older sites disappear online.”

More importantly, these websites that promote eating disorders should definitely come to a halt. Whether the Internet is a public domain where users have a free rein to post anything they want, this kind of promotion is not of any positive outcome.