Eating Disorders

'Binge eating disorder (BED)' is when a person loses control of the volume of food that they consume, leaving them feeling uncomfortably full and extremely guilty about the quantity of food they have eaten.

Although it is more common to see eating disorders in females, males are also affected by the same eating disorders.

As we spend more time online, concerns are growing that some content on the internet can have a detrimental effect on those with existing eating disorders, and there are even concerns that potentially damaging content online can 'trigger' eating disorders in people that wouldn't normally be affected by the problem.

The media has always depicted images of unrealistic body types as 'healthy' and 'beautiful' long before the internet became such a huge part of our lives. This can affect someone with an existing eating disorder such as anorexia by influencing them to aspire to this type of physical conditioning, but they may feel like the only way to achieve this quickly is by counting calories obsessively and/or exercising excessively.

Content and images of this nature might also affect people suffering from binge eating disorder (BED), as they may feel guilty and disappointed about not being able to achieve a similar figure, finding comfort in continuing to binge on food.

Anybody can join these communities or forums regardless of their age and 'work' alongside others to achieve their main goal of being as thin as possible; they can be particularly intriguing to young and vulnerable people.

There are also situations where people considering losing weight in a healthy way who have been persuaded to join a 'pro ana' (pro anorexia) group end up developing an eating disorder themselves, a worryingly common scenario.

In recent years, being unhealthily thin has been 'glamorized' in the form of online challenges and games such as the 'ABC diet' (Anorexia Boot Camp), in which the 'participant' must commit to an unhealthy number of calories per day and regularly starve themselves of food completely.

Another popular online game is the 'A4 Challenge' in which people have to exercise and diet until their waist has become the same width as an A4 piece of paper.

Internet users create images of unrealistically thin, underweight bodies for people suffering from an eating disorder in order to motivate them to change their eating habits. Sometimes these images have text within them, such as "Feet together, thighs apart," or sometimes something as blunt as "Stop eating."

Some social media platforms have tightened their guidelines and policies to discourage users from posting or searching for disturbing content such as "thinspiration." However, people are changing the name of the content and using different hashtags to get around restrictions, which is an ongoing problem.