Web Sites Serve Up Dangerous Eating Disorders Advice

Parents often fail to recognize children's use of harmful venues for weight-loss tips.

By Karen Pallarito
HealthDay Reporter
Friday, August 10, 2007; 12:00 AM

Copyright © 2007 ScoutNews, LLC. All rights reserved.

FRIDAY, Aug. 10 (HealthDay News) -- They're called pro-eating disorder Web sites. And many teens looking to lose weight -- even those who don't need to -- are logging on to these communities of individuals who engage in dangerous eating habits.

Yet many parents aren't aware the sites even exist and that their children are visiting them, researchers have found.

"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," said study author Dr. Rebecka Peebles, an instructor in adolescent medicine at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford University School of Medicine. "And I think that's actually what a lot of kids are doing online at home from their bedrooms."

Potentially dangerous venues include Web sites where people who engage in disordered eating gather to discuss their activities. A majority of these sites have sections where members of the community share tips and techniques "that I would consider as a physician fairly harmful," Peebles said.

Complicating matters, "pro-recovery" sites that promote recovery from eating disorders can also be a source of weight-loss or purging techniques, the researchers found.

Peebles and her colleagues sent questionnaires regarding Internet use and eating disorder information to the parents of almost 700 people who had been evaluated for an eating disorder at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital between 1997 and 2004. A total of 182 responded, including 76 teens and 106 parents.

Forty-one percent of the patients had visited a pro-eating disorder (pro-ED) Web site, while 36 percent had visited a pro-recovery Web site.

One of the problems, Peebles explained, is that even forums designed to disseminate helpful information are constantly changing and may contain content that wasn't the author's original intent. "In our study, we did find that 96 percent of patients who visited pro-ED Web sites reported learning dieting tips and purging techniques from Web sites," she said. "However, nearly half of the people who visited pro-recovery Web sites also reported learning similar tips and techniques."