Web Sites Glamorize Eating Disorders
Young people can pick up dieting and purging techniques online

(HealthDay News) -- If your child is obsessed by her weight or body image and spends lots of time online, be wary. She could be seeking advice and support from a Web site or blog that glamorizes anorexia nervosa and bulimia, two potentially deadly eating disorders.

The sites, known as "pro-ana" and "pro-mia" sites, support and encourage anorexics and bulimics in their quest to starve and purge themselves to extreme thinness, according to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders. In these communities, eating disorders are a way of life, not a disease.

The sites have become such a menace that lawmakers in France , renowned for its extremely thin models, are taking action.

In April, France 's lower house of Parliament passed a measure aimed at banning Web sites that encourage eating disorders, Reuters news service reported. The measure, which requires Senate action, would impose penalties of up to 30,000 euros (or more than US$47,000) and up to two years in prison, it said. In the case of a death due to an eating disorder, penalties would rise to three years in prison and 45,000 euros (more than US$71,000).

In the United States , as many as 10 million women and 1 million men have an eating disorder, according to the National Eating Disorders Association.

The number of Web sites where teens can share weight-loss strategies, images of women wasting away and methods for avoiding detection by family and health providers has proliferated, researchers report.

"Most parents would not endorse their child leaving the house at night, walking to an area of town that they themselves had never been in and meeting people that they themselves had never met," Dr. Rebecka Peebles, an instructor in adolescent medicine at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford University School of Medicine, told HealthDay . "And I think that's exactly what a lot of kids are doing online at home from their bedrooms."

Peebles co-authored a study in Pediatrics that examined parents' and teens' knowledge of "pro-eating disorder Web sites." The findings underscore just how important it is for parents to educate themselves about the Internet.

For the study, the researchers approached nearly 700 families of young people 10 to 22 years old who had been diagnosed with an eating disorder. A total of 106 parents and 76 teens responded to a questionnaire.

A large percentage of those with an eating disorder (41 percent) had visited a pro-eating disorder Web site, the survey found. A similar number (36 percent) had visited a "pro-recovery" site, dedicated to helping people overcome eating disorders.

But Peebles said the problem is that almost half of those who had visited a pro-recovery site picked up dieting and purging techniques.

And many parents remain in the dark. More than 52 percent of parents in the study had no idea whether their children visited pro-eating disorder Web sites. In addition, a majority of the parents knew nothing about pro-recovery sites and were unsure whether their children had visited such sites.

Cynthia M. Bulik, a professor of eating disorders at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine, and director of the UNC Eating Disorders Program at UNC Hospitals, tells parents to brush up on their Internet skills.

"Most of our kids are more savvy surfers than we are," she told HealthDay .

What else can parents do? The National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders offers tips for Web safety:

• Buy good Web-monitoring software. Make sure the program lets you see all Web pages visited, read sent and received e-mail, and see both sides of instant-messaging chats. It should have remote Web access so you can monitor things from wherever you are. Also look for features that allow blocking and filtering of data.
• Keep the computer in a public room of your home. This will allow discreet monitoring of computer activities as you pass by.
• Set age-appropriate rules and guidelines for computer use. Discuss the rules with your children and put a copy near the computer as a reminder. Excessive use of online services or bulletin boards, especially late at night, might indicate a hidden problem.

On the Web

To learn more about preventing eating disorders, visit the National Eating Disorders Association.

SOURCES: HealthDay News ; Rebecka Peebles, M.D., instructor of adolescent medicine, Lucile Packard Children's Hospital, Stanford University School of Medicine, Mountain View, Calif.; Cynthia M. Bulik, Ph.D., FAED, professor of eating disorders, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine, and director, UNC Eating Disorders Program, UNC Hospitals, Chapel Hill, N.C.; Dec. 1, 2006, Pediatrics ; Reuters, news report, April 15, 2008; National Eating Disorders Association (www.nationaleatingdisorders.org); National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders (www.anad.org)
Author: Karen Pallarito
Publication Date: Aug. 31, 2008
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