Thinspiration: The Dangers of Pro-ana and Pro-mia Websites

            A few weeks ago I posted about forums aimed at supporting women transitioning from relaxed to straight hair and discussed the ways in which these forums were helping women to embrace their natural hair texture. This week, I wanted to focus on ways that online forum support groups can have harmful effects on the physical and psychological well being of the subscribers. One of the most salient examples of websites of this variety are the pro-ana and pro-mia websites that serve as media through which people suffering from anorexia or bulimia can foster a community. These sites offer tips on how people can lose more weight and better hide their eating disorder. The real danger, however, resides in the fact that these forums serve to solidify ideologies that one can never be thin enough and that eating disorders are lifestyle choices that are shows of strength and dedication. They present ‘conquering food’ through starvation or purging as a way to take control of one’s life.

Here is a news report featuring young women discussing how these pro-ana and pro-mia sites influenced their eating disorders:

One issue that arises in the video is whether search engines should remove the websites that promote eating disorders or if it is an issue of free speech. Even with removal of such sites from search engine results, people suffering from eating disorders will likely not have much difficulty locating them through other social networking sites. In fact, I came up with the topic for this post after seeing a raw food diet video on Youtube while searching for videos on the dangers of pesticides. The video featured a young lady telling a more seasoned raw food dieter about how she no energy and had stopped menstruating since starting the diet. The seasoned dieter responded by saying that she was detoxing and just needed to really want to have this ‘perfect’ diet in which she ate only ‘perfect’ foods. While videos such as these are not as harmful as those encouraging people into full-fledged eating disorders, it just illustrates how easy it is for information about ideal body types and diets to be disseminated through the web.

Do you feel that sites promoting unhealthy behaviors should be censored on the web by removing them from search engine results? Should the target age group factor into this censorship?