• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

NetFamilyNews.org

Kid tech intel for everybody

Show Search
Hide Search
  • Home
  • Youth
  • Parenting
  • Literacy
  • Safety
  • Policy
  • Research
  • About NetFamilyNews.org
    • Supporters
    • Anne Collier’s Bio
    • Copyright
    • Privacy

A call to action on eating disorder sites

September 23, 2009 By Anne Leave a Comment

Britain’s Royal College of Psychiatrists called for “urgent action” to protect online youth vulnerable to pro-eating-disorder Web sites, the BBC reports. It says the number of such sites has “soared with the growth of social networking,” and the government’s year-old Child Internet Safety Council should expand its definition of harmful sites to include those promoting anorexia (pro-ana) and bulimia (pro-mia). The BBC cited one eating-disorder charity as saying it welcomes the Royal College’s position but banning pro-ED sites doesn’t get to the root of the problem.

The other issue is that social networking complicates the issue. Not only is this not just about Web sites but profiles and pages in social sites and on mobile phone networks, and all of the above based in other countries. Further complexity is evident in the pages, profiles, and sites themselves, which display both pro and con positions at the same time. In a story about the migration from secret sites to social-network ones, Newsweek cites the view of Dr. Steven Crawford at the Center for Eating Disorders in Baltimore, who “sees the openness of the Facebook site as part of its appeal. Increasing numbers of teenage patients at the center are joining Facebook groups that proclaim their disorders to the world, which Crawford believes is a means of adolescent rebellion.” Dartmouth Prof. Marcia Herrin, author of several books on the subject, “finds the public nature of the discussions of anorexia on Facebook encouraging, because it shows that teens are less afraid of confronting eating disorders,” Newsweek adds. Facebook says it actively searches for and deletes pro-ED groups because, in supporting self-harm, they violate its terms of use.

This past June, Liz Jones, a columnist for the Daily Mail in the UK, wrote about her 40-year battle with anorexia and a normal-eating experiment she conducted for three weeks. It’s just one person’s story but maybe sheds some light: “I found the gnawing, tight knot that is always in my stomach – fear of life, work, boys, social interaction – was quietened when I starved it…. I might not have been good at anything else – relationships, sport, conversation – but I have been really good at being thin…. That’s the thing about being a borderline anorexic: it makes you feel superior, clean, morally unimpeachable. It isn’t a whole lot of fun, endlessly disappointing friends who invite you for lunch. My spartan lifestyle … has kept me tiny, but it has also isolated me…. I’d rather be thin than happy or healthy.” [See also my 2007 interview with “Hannah” about her anorexic friend and “Sarah’s Death at 19 Left Her Family Struggling to Understand the Power of an Eating Disorder” in the Washington Post last spring.]

Share Button

Filed Under: eating disorders, Risk & Safety, self-harm Tagged With: Facebook, pro-ana, pro-mia, Royal College of Psychiatrists

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Primary Sidebar

NFN in your in-box:

Anne Collier


Bio and my...
2016 TEDx Talk on
the heart of digital citizenship

Connect with me on LinkedIn
Follow me on MASTODON
Friend me on Facebook
See me on YouTube

IMPORTANT RESOURCES

Our (DIGITAL) PARENTING BASICS: Safety + Social
NAMLE, the National Association for Media Literacy Education
CASEL.org & the 5 core social-emotional competencies of SEL
Center for Democracy & Technology
Center for Innovative Public Health Research
Childnet International
Committee for Children
Congressional Internet Caucus Academy
ConnectSafely.org
Control Shift: a pivotal book for Internet safety
Crimes Against Children Research Center
Crisis Textline
Cyber Civil Rights Initiative's Revenge Porn Crisis Line
Cyberwise.org
danah boyd's blog and book about networked youth
Disconnected, Carrie James's book on digital ethics
FOSI.org's Good Digital Parenting
The research of Global Kids Online
The Good Project at Harvard's School of Education
If you watch nothing else: "Parenting in a Digital Age" TED Talk by Prof. Sonia Livingstone
The International Bullying Prevention Association
Let Grow Foundation
Making Caring Common
Raising Digital Natives, author Devorah Heitner's site
Renee Hobbs at the Media Education Lab
MediaSmarts.ca
The New Media Literacies
Report of the Aspen Task Force on Learning & the Internet and our guide to Creating Trusted Learning Environments
The Ruler Approach to social-emotional learning (Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence)
Sources of Strength
"Young & Online: Perspectives on life in a digital age" from young people in 26 countries (via UNICEF)
"Youth Safety on a Living Internet": 2010 report of the Online Safety & Technology Working Group (and my post about it)

Categories

Recent Posts

  • Safety by co-design: How we can take youth online safety to the next level
  • Much-less-social media on Facebook’s 20th birthday
  • What child online safety really needs, senators
  • Welcome to 2024!
  • Supporting the youngest witnesses of this humanitarian crisis
  • Should our kids learn how to use generative AI? Well…
  • The missing piece in US child online safety law
  • Generative AI: July 2023 freeze frame

Footer

Welcome to NetFamilyNews!

Founded as a nonprofit public service in 1999, NetFamilyNews quickly became the “community newspaper” of a vital interest community of subscribers in more than 50 countries. Site and newsletter became a blog in the early 2000s. Nowadays, you can subscribe in the box to the right to receive articles in your in-box as they're posted – or look for toots on Mastodon or posts on our Facebook page, LinkedIn and Medium.com. She welcomes your comments, follows and shares!

Categories

  • Home
  • Youth
  • Parenting
  • Literacy
  • Safety
  • Policy
  • Research

ABOUT

  • About NFN
  • Supporters
  • Anne Collier’s Bio
  • Copyright
  • Privacy

Search

Subscribe



THANKS TO NETFAMILYNEWS.ORG's SUPPORTER HOMESCHOOL CURRICULUM.
Copyright © 2025 ANNE COLLIER. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.