Social Networking and eating disorders have teamed up to produce a disturbing new trend for those struggling with this disease. Isolation is a recognized symptom of eating disorder sufferers and a symptom that alerts anyone close that there is a problem. With the advent of social networking anyone can appear to be interacting socially when in reality they are receiving negative support for those behaviors that are dangerous and life threatening. The pain of isolation is gone replaced with a network of afflicted eating disorder sufferers who encourage one another and trade diets that are recipes of malnourishment.
Social Networking and eating disorders combine to produce a worldwide audience. Some of which may not have previous knowledge of disordered eating and are receiving information that glorifies it rather than introducing the devastating effects of this disease. Those viewing a social networking will learn new was to vomit or ways to hide their disease from family or friends that could provide help that might save a life.
Organizations have joined together to remove “Ana Sits” from the internet only to see the use of “Face book” and “MySpace” replace those banned sites. Some organizations join social networking sites portraying themselves as a positive support system only to be revealed trading pictures of anorexic members and their weight loss diets.
Children are the most susceptible to this new form of peer pressure. It becomes much easier to locate someone with the same negative behavior pattern to identify with receive negative feedback. Eating disorder treatment centers report new clients are talking about their experience with social networking and their eating disorder. All addictive diseases dealing with obsessive behavior are insidious; adding the internet seems to increase vulnerability and speed up the negative progression. Suffering people are looking for acceptance and will continue to use social networking if they can’t find that acceptance anywhere else.