Pro-Anorexia Websites
What are pro-anorexic websites?
These are websites that have been just growing on the Internet, where girls who are severe in their illness use the websites to encourage other people to develop the illness or stay in it. So these are actually anorexic girls who have created these websites and they give tips to other girls on how to sustain their eating disorder and how to maintain it.
What are pro-recovery websites?
Recovery websites usually won't sound like pro-recovery websites. Recovery websites are going to be things like blogs with people talking about: What kind of things they do, the techniques they use in order to get better and of those kinds of things. But often, what one might find this: you may think you're going to a pro-recovery website, but it's a pro-anorexia website disguising it self as a pro-recovery website. So sometimes, as you enter a chat room, it could look like you're on pro-recovery website, but as you go further in, you start to look at some of the posts and things start to change. They may become a more encouraging towards your anorexia as supposed to rejecting it- so it can be quite deceiving. So, I think there can be pro-recovery websites, but there's a deceptive component on the internet and so I encourage family members to read them and look at those websites. to make sure it's nice.
Why are pro-anorexic so dangerous?
I would say that pro-anorexic websites are dangerous and the reason why pro-recovery websites can be dangerous is because of the deception factor I just talked about. It could look like a pro-recovery but it could actually be a pro supporting the endless kind of a website and the main reason why these websites are dangerous is because what they do is they teach somebody who is in the beginning stages of an illness how to get more intense with their illness how to be able to do those behaviours and become more secretive and hide things more. Basically what it does is it catapults a persons illness. A pro-anorexia website, if your child, and I think it's really okay for parents to be checking in on what websites their kids are going on specially if they're suspecting an eating disorder. I would do a check on what sites they visited and really take a look at what pro anorexia websites they're going to. If your child is going to those websites it's guaranteed her eating disorder is going to escalate much more farther and then we've got research in our field which also shows that girls who tend to go on pro-anorexia websites they tend to have slower recovery times and some of them tend to stay in the illness longer that some of the girls who have not been on some of those websites.
Who runs websites that advocate anorexia?
Generally, the websites are set up by girls who are in the illness, very actively in the illness. These are girls who are saying-put yourself in the feet of an anorexic, the shoes of an anorexic. If you have developed this coping mechanism that is so phenomenal that it makes you feel on top of the world, it makes you feel good about yourself and all of a sudden all these parents kind of swoop in on you and they take away all your control from you and they start wanting to make you fat. Will you not want to go to a community that understands your need for thinness, understands why you need to have this austerity in your life and why you need to have the pain of hunger in your life. So because the drive to maintain the connection with the eating disorder is so strong, girls will go to anything in order to maintain the connection with their sick self, which is the eating disorder self. And the pro-anorexic websites are flourishing because there are many girls who are diagnosed and may be in treatment and really don't want to get better just yet so they keep kind of dabbling back into the eating disorder through the website as a way of maintaining connection with the eating disorder.
How can I tell if a website about anorexia is dangerous?
You as a parent go to the website. Go on a website, and look at that website. The way you know it's dangerous is if you see a website glorifying anorexia. The essence of a pro-ana website would be to glorify anorexia. Why should a size 0 be glorified? Why should anorexia be glorified if anorexia is going to lead to death? Why should we glorify that? From a feminist perspective, I can go off on this because when we get girls to start obsessing about empty things like calories and fat grams and things like that, then what we're doing is we're taking this whole population of the top three percent of girls, and kicking them out because now they're no longer functional. If you're not nourishing your brain, that means you're not getting any food. Do you think academically you're going to get anywhere? Absolutely not. You think career-wise you'll get anywhere? Absolutely not. So we have the top three percent of girls who actually get kicked out of functioning in life as a result of their eating disorder. So we have this huge piece where we're living in a society that's really encouraging these girls to fill their bright minds with empty thoughts about calories and fat grams and sizes.
What can I do to keep my child away from websites that advocate anorexia?
You do exactly as you would if you consider pornography to be harmful to your child. What do you do on your home computer to keep them away from pornography? It's the same thing. You do the same thing. You block those websites, and you have to keep checking the computer regularly to see where she goes because you know she's going to be bright. She'll know how to erase her history, she'll know how to do all of those things. However, there have to be some very strict guidelines. I'm a firm believer in the computer not being in their room, because what we do know is that the girls who are going to be most prone to anorexia have computers in their room. What you may have to do is keep the computer in a central area where it can be seen, and you know what website she's on and you're monitoring the activity. If you have discovered a child that is using pot, chances are that you're going to be doing some testing for the pot. You're going to be checking her eyes and you're going to be asking her questions. You may do spontaneous urine tests on that child if you knew he or she has become addicted to pot, or is using pot in a way that is affecting them negatively. Anorexia is affecting them negatively. The same measures you would take towards a child who may be drinking in a way which is affecting them negatively or doing some drugs, you would do the same type of measures with pro-anorexia websites. A pro-anorexia website is their drug of choice. It gives them the fix to do their drug.