Instagram Hashtags and Pro-Eating Disorders Essay Example

Instagram is a popular photo-sharing application used by adolescents and older. People all over the world share their lives on this platform with photos, but not all photos are seen as appropriate. From Instagram influencers to regular people who publish pictures of the “perfect” body including hashtags that are promoting eating disorders. However, not all Instagram accounts deliberately promote eating disorders, but there are fitness accounts that intentionally do this and encourage eating disorders as a “healthy lifestyle”.  

Instagram contains popular users who are classified as influencers. Gary Henderson perfectly illustrates the embodiment of Instagram influencers when he asserts, “Instagram influencers are regular Instagram users but with a unique ability to influence others, well-established credibility, and a considerably large audience”. Many Instagram influencers display unrealistic body ideals. For example, Essena O’Neill, an Instagram influencer, posted a photo of herself in a bikini followed by the caption, “stomach sucked in, strategic pose, pushed up boobs. I just want younger girls to know this isn’t candid life, or cool or inspiration. It’s contrived perfection made to get attention” (qtd. in Ladin, How Instagram Encouraged My Eating Disorder). O’Neill shares the methods that she and many other Instagram users deploy when capturing and editing photos in order to appear “perfect”. These tactics include the portrayal of distorted images which can be extremely influential on what an impressionable mind defines as superior body ideals. Unfortunately, the most affected are youth and adolescence. Moreover, “ A 2010 study found that 69% of American girls five to 12-years old say pictures influence their concept of ideal body shape and 47% report that images make them want to lose weight” [29](Stevie Chancellor Jessica Pater Trustin Clear Eric Gilbert Munmun De Choudhury. Constant bombardment of these doctored versions of people is “creating a breeding ground for disordered eating” (Celia Malighetti, Alice Chirico, Simona Sciara, and Giuseppe Rivac). 

Instagram contains a multitudinous amount of groups and communities that users can engage with. One of the most popular communities is the fitness community. Although the majority of the fitness community on Instagram contains beneficial fitness and nutrition related material, the fitness community is plagued with some accounts that publish content that promotes malnutrition. Some fitness accounts make bold claims of losing weight by doing things that are not healthy nor have any type of scientific backing. These faux-fitness pages constantly give non-evidential and diluted advice such as: “To lose weight, you should never eat when you’re not hungry” (Jennifer Neda John). People who are experiencing an eating disorder might trust and blindly follow advice that any fitness page might offer, and “those followers who are prone to obsessive tendencies, struggling with an eating disorder, or overly concerned about their body can take Instagram fitness advice to the extreme, working out compulsively or restricting their diets to the point of danger” (Brittany Ladin). 

 While some accounts deceptively promote media that enables eating disorders, other accounts blatantly promote pro-eating disorder lifestyles. Not only do pro-eating disorder accounts cause an already-present eating disorder to intensify, but also “pro-eating disorder (pro-ED) communities on social media encourage the adoption and maintenance of disordered eating habits as acceptable alternative lifestyles rather than threats to health” (Stevie Chancellor, Jessica Pater, et.al). Pro-eating disorder accounts pull healthy individuals in and oftentimes it amounts to the otherwise healthy person to develop an eating disorder. One tactic that these accounts do is to maliciously utilize hashtags.Hashtag is defined as, “a word or phrase preceded by the symbol # that classifies or categorizes the accompanying text”(websters). Pro-eating disorder hashtags provide a simple way of more quickly connecting other supporters who intentionally subject themselves to furthering an eating disorder. Furthermore, “many popular hashtags, including #gains, #eatclean, and #fitgirls, offer a distorted perspective on normal body image and eating habits”(Brittany Ladin). Although these hashtags are slightly deceptive, some hashtags are used to blatantly express pro-eating disorder ideals. For instance, “‘pro-anorexia’ tags and pages have been known for years to outwardly promote eating-disordered lifestyles” (Brittany). It might seem apparent that these types of malicious posts would be against Instagram’s community guidelines; however, a lot of the hashtags are coded or slightly changed to bypass previous restrictions, and “although Instagram doesn't officially allow such posts, and removes them when flagged, there are still numerous images, videos, hashtags, and comments which promote eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia on the social network” (Rachel Hosie). Hashtags are just one of the many ways pro-eating disorder accounts draw people in.