Story URL: http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/news.aspx?id=70761
Story Retrieval Date: 2/9/2010 7:25:39 PM CST
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Family computers could promote a deadly disease
by
David Rivelli
Nov 27, 2007
Four steps for parents to protect children from pro-anorexia Web sites:
1. Purchase software that can give parental control and filter what your children look at on the computer. Many software programs offering these services are affordable. including. Contentwatch.com priced at under $40.
2. Just as you set a curfew for how late your children can stay out, set a curfew for how late they can be on the computer.
3. Teach yourself what your children already know. Log on to the same Webs sites your children use. Anyone can have a profile on social Web sites like MySpace, YouTube and LiveJournal.
4. If your child shows any signs of an eating disorder, get professional help immediately. Diseases such as anorexia nervosa need to be handled by medical professionals.
Tifani Dembek, 19, of suburban Chicago battles anorexia nervosa. The potentially fatal disease is in her mind, her body and, just as dangerously, at her fingertips on the Internet.
Parents, she said, should be aware of the power of the Internet. Just a click away on Dembek's computer keyboard lie pro-anorexic Web sites that serve up a potential recipe for slow suicide.
“Educating parents is important,” Dembek said. “I know my parents had no idea what I was doing. If they had known, there is no way they would have let me go on my family computer at midnight and look at these Web sites.”
The sites offer tips on how to hide anorexia from family members, encouragement to push for unhealthy weight-loss goals and graphic images that serve as motivation to continue the anorexic lifestyle.
“None of my friends or family was going to tell me that it was OK to be using these [anorexia-producing] behaviors,” says Dembek, a sophomore at Marquette University. “On the Web sites people were encouraging of the eating disorder behaviors. They glamorize it.”
Anorexia is an eating disorder in which people become obsessed with their weight and appearance, pursuing thinness to the point of starvation. Seven million women and one million men in the United States suffer from eating disorders including anorexia in the United States, according to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders. Forty-three percent are between the ages of 16 and 20
Some may think pro-anorexia Web sites are isolated and underground. Think again.
“If you were to Google anorexia, it is likely that the LiveJournal pro-anorexia social networking community would come up almost No. 1,” said Keith Sanderson, director of communication for the national association. “To me, that is terrifying.”
A community site on LiveJournal, the Internet's second largest social-networking Web site, claims to be the largest pro-anorexic Web site in the world. According to Sanderson, more than 10,000 people sign into this community.
The producers of LiveJournal was not available for comment.
Sanderson and the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa have led the charge to stop these sites. They sponsor the Media Internet Guardian, a watchdog group of volunteers who monitor the Web sites.
“The network of social communities has created a whole type of problem,” Sanderson said. “ If you look at YouTube, My Space and LiveJournal you can’t just take these sites down,” he said, because they aren’t breaking the law.
In addition to LiveJournal, You Tube and My Space have had large numbers of pro-anorexia groups and videos. According to a survey Sanderson's organization did in August, YouTube had 9,705 pro-anorexia videos and MySpace had 313 videos and 313 groups.
"My parents were completely unaware the whole time that I was actively using these Web sites," Dembek said. "They did not find out until I was asked to be interviewed for the NBC 5 News during my senior year
of high school, after I had stopped using them...Many people are not aware of things such as these."
