Medical professionals and academics are saying that despite efforts by social media sites, pro-eating disorder content continues to proliferate on the web — and that this is a huge problem.
In 2012, Instagram banned hashtags that "actively promote self harm," including #proanorexia, #proana, #thinspiration, and #thighgap. The also company attached content warnings to posts with other eating-disorder-associated hashtags. But eating disorders specialists and researchers are finding that it's not enough for sites just to try to get rid of certain words, since users are creating other hashtags to take their places.
For example, in a study published last month in Journal of Eating Disorders, researchers found that images captioned with #bonespiration — a hashtag introduced relatively recently — were more likely to feature protruding bones than the hashtag #fitspiration, which was more likely to be attached to images of muscular bodies. Moreover, just because "thinspiration" content is banned on one site doesn't mean it's banned elsewhere. Researchers at Georgia Tech have pointed out that pro-eating disorder communities share content on Reddit and YouTube more freely than on Instagram or Facebook, for example.
Obviously, it's not enough to tell people that they need to stop looking at these images; it's about creating a culture where they don't exist in the first place. "Numerous studies have shown that media portrayals of unrealistic and unhealthy body types do contribute to eating disorders," family practice physician Christine Eady Mann tells Allure. "The proliferation of hashtags like #thinspiration and #bonespiration have the risk of making this problem even worse, as our youth and adolescents are exposed to these images at ever younger ages."
Social media sites need to start taking on these issues sooner rather than later: The National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders cites statistics that an estimated 30 million people in the U.S. alone suffer from an eating disorders, and that one person dies roughly every hour from complications of an eating disorder. And even when an eating disorder isn't fatal, it can have serious and long-term impact on a sufferer's mental and physical health.
If you or someone you know is struggling with an eating disorder, visit the National Eating Disorders Association website or call the helpline at 1-800-931-2237.
