• Introduction
o Thesis- The portrayal of eating disorders on social media, also known as thinspiration, has increased in the past few years with the addition of more forms of social media. Thinspiration is incredibly harmful and can create or extend eating disorders and other self-image problems as seen by multiple studies.
o Mass media helps to construct what we think about ourselves through how people respond to us and what we like.
o This is especially true for social media (likes, reposts, favorites, etc.)
o Social media also acts as a platform for support.
o Can be helpful to have support from people who understand you, but when featuring destructive actions (i.e. thinspiration) it works in the opposite way, creating more problems than there were before
o What exactly is thinspiration?
o Thinspiration is a means of inspiration to become thinner that often utilizes unhealthy nutrional habits including binging, purging, and starving oneself. Thinspiration is most commonly shared through various social media platforms.
o "...glamorize and glorify the pain of excessive weight loss..." (Mascarelli, 2014)
o Why is it a problem?
o Thinness is valued in our society as shown through what media publishes (magazine covers, size of models, fixation on the size of celebrities)
o A commonly held belief, as found out through a study published in Social Problems, is that
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thinness is ideal and associated with high class, wealth, and beauty. On the other hand
obesity is associated with more lower class and "ugliness". O
o This leads average people to feel like they are not good enough and when these societal pressures combine with genetic predispositions, certain personality traits, and possible psychological issues, body image issues and eating disorders are created.
o "An estimated 30 million Americans suffer from a clinically significant eating disorder (20 million women and 10 million men) at some time in their life, according to NEDA." (Rojas, 2014)
o Thinspiration extends the idea that average people are not "good enough" for societal standards and that they should work to change themselves to be deemed desirable. It goes the extra mile and brings that message to people on social media, a pretty inescapable platform in mass media where it expands daily.
o "...the number of pro anorexia and pro bulimia - or "pro mia" - sites increased 470 per cent between 2006 and 2008. Since 2008 the number of postings has continued to rise..." (Cincotta, 2014)
o Viewing these types of images and staying on social media sources for extended amounts of time can cause body image problems.
o Facebook Study by Florida State University (Mysko, 2014) in which two studies were done involving Facebook. One had 960 college aged women fill out two surveys, one on their eating habits and self-image thoughts and another on their Facebook usage. The results showed that those who used Facebook more, suffered from "disordered eating". The next study had two groups of 42 women. One group spent 20 minutes on Facebook and the other spent 20 minutes looking at a Wikipedia article on an Ocelot. When asked to report on their body satisfaction directly after the twenty minutes, the women who looked at Facebook were more displeased with their body.
o This helps show the harm that social media and its messages about how one should look are harmful to self-esteem even in small doses.
o Perhaps this happens because social media "...amplifies behaviors associated with eating disorders - obsessions, comparisons and competition - with a constant stream of imagery and camaraderie-building, and how easy it is to seek and gain approval." (Rojas, 2014)
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o People are putting themselves out there on social media and often seek approval and feel a
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small sense of satisfaction with every like, favorite, or repost one gets. In order to seek more -
approval or when they do not get any at all, some people take it to extremes and try to (‘Al°1;-62 Vivi\
become a "societal ideal" which is where thinspiration comes in. 1/41\-,
o Looking at social media can lead to wanting to be "ideal" which can lead to looking at (-
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thinspiration which can start a chain of unhealthy habits both psychologically (eating
disorders, body image problems, depression) and physically (results of eating disorders, over 191"
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o One man who had anorexia and often looked at thinspiration said "On social media, you have tuQ--"
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to look like this, your body has to be shaped this way, you have to have this skin color, you 5 oStf have to have this smile to be acceptable to society," (Shalby, 2014)
o Thinspiration has even spawned new obsessions with specific body parts, especially the idea of having a "thigh gap". This message originally came from thinspiration and then spread to mainstream media, thus showing the power of thinspiration as a movement.
o "Experts say that social media are giving such terms as thigh gap and "orthorexia" - a fixation on eating healthful food that can spark anxiety, and, paradoxically, malnutrition - an unprecedented following. When promulgated by social media, these terms "give people something to latch onto," says Claire Mysko, a consultant for the National Eating Disorders
Association's youth program. "The existence of social media really allows that kind of obsession to take on a new life." (Mascarelli, 2014)
o Thinspiration has the power to create the potential for destructive behavior as well as create societal standards for how people should look (i.e. the thigh gap issue)
o "We have seen an increased trend in which adolescent girls and young women are engaging in extreme dieting in pursuit of a so-called thigh gap," says Tania Heller, medical director of the Washington Center for Eating Disorders and Adolescent Obesity in Bethesda. (Mascarelli, 2014)
o Media as a whole can also create destructive behavior as shown in a study done by Harvard Medical School. The scientists focused on an all-girls school in Fiji, mainly due to the fact that only 8% of households have access to a television. The girls who were exposed to television were 60% more likely to say that they have abnormal eating habits than those who did not watch television. (Park, 2011)
o Additionally, thinspiration makes eating disorders appear as something that is normal, accepted, and essentially a lifestyle choice or diet. Obviously, this is not true and eating disorders are real psychological problems but because of the glamorization of unhealthy eating habits by thinspiration, this is no longer true.
• This is shown in Worrying World of Eating Disorder Wannabes, an article in the British Medical Journal. The article examines the idea of "wannarexia", the proposed idea that eating disorders can be an act that people aspire to as opposed to the harmful mental illness that it is. This journal presents the idea that anorexia can be "glamorous" and be a fast way to lose weight, which is obviously absurd. The article even mentions Facebook, Youtube, and even MySpace as platforms people have used to glamorize eating disorders and present them as competitions.
• The article's point even places people with actual eating disorders on one side while people who are using unhealthy eating habits as a "lifestyle choice" are on the other. Even in thinspiration lines are drawn in that there are those recovering and those actively using thinspiration. Many of the same hashtags are used on social media to he a place that stores both encouraging recovery stories and triggering thinspo images.
• For further proof that thinspiration and media as a whole have influenced the eating disorder community one can look no further than a list of symptoms for body image issues that lists "Is my perception of beauty distorted from years of media exposure that glorifies a very thin ideal that is unrealistic for most people to obtain in a healthy manner?" (Ekern, 2014)
• Over all, thinspiration has a thick grip on numerous groups of people whether they are anorexics or "wanarexics" or just people struggling with body image in a world where the ideal is only possible with genetics and Photoshop
• What are social media sites doing about this?
• Each of the social media sites, with the exception of Twitter, has some form of warning on potentially harmful images.
• Twitter has no advisories or separations for
• Instagram has a message come up when a user tries to search potentially harmful hashtags such as #ana, #mia, or #thinspo. The message says "Content Advisory. Please be advised these images may contain graphic content. For information and support on eating disorders please tap on learn more." A menu of three options is shown below the message that says Learn More, Show Posts, and Cancel. Instagram's policy is to disable all of the accounts posting any of this content, yet there were around a billion posts in these tags when I checked in November 2014.
• Facebook takes down any pages dealing with thinspiration and they keep an eye on the very few thinspo pages that are still up.
• "Facebook takes threats of self-harm very seriously. We remove any promotion or encouragement of... eating disorders." (Burton, 2014)
• Although Pinterest has a very popular health and fitness tag that hosts a lot of thinspiration it is in the user agreement that anyone using Pinterest will not post "...User Content that creates a risk of harm, loss, physical or mental injury, emotional distress, death, disability, disfigurement, or physical or mental illness to yourself, to any other person, or to any animal." (Cincotta, 2014). Due to the fact that thinspo still gets on the website, Pinterest also has a banner set up above the images when a user searches thinspo that says "Eating disorders are not lifestyle choices they are mental disorders that if left untreated can cause serious health problems or even be life threatening" as well as a number for the NEDA hotline.
• Tumblr is well known for the presence of some of the most devastating thinspiration out there on the site and although the user agreement includes "Don't post content that actively promotes... anorexia, bulimia or other eating disorders... We aim to sustain Tumblr as a place that facilitates awareness, support and recovery, and to remove only those blogs that cross the line into active promotion or glorification of self-harm." (Cincotta, 2014).
• Over all, social media is setting people up to get help yet not getting rid of the content that may be plaguing them. The problem keeps going in a vicious cycle of more people posting thinspiration with more people looking at it and so forth.
• As for society, this extenuates the problem and until the content is taken out of social media the cycle will keep going.
• Conclusion- Restate thesis