Instagram Popular Photo Based Social Network for Pro-Anorexia Users

Most of us are familiar with many of the popular sites for social networking that may include photo postings such as Facebook. However, some social blogging networks like Tumblr are taking a stand to block pro-anorexia photos and blogs. Those who seek such images known as “thinspiration” have been migrating to other sites since Tumbler has banned such images and label them as self-destructive. According to Tech News Daily, some just call these photos skinny while others refer to them as pro-anorexia. Lately, these people have migrated to popular photo-based social networking site Instagram. This is the new, hip social photograph site and has become a popular destination for those who are obsessed with thinness. However, in April Instagram followed suit behind Tumblr announcing it would now ban all accounts that promoted harmful behaviors such as anorexia and other self destructive behaviors. Pro-anorexia or “pro-ana” sites as they are also known are really thriving right now. If you search Instagram and put in such words as “thins” or “#thinspo” you will come up with over 25,000 pictures and if you simply put in “skinny” you will come up with more than 155,000 results. Pinterest is also a popular site that has a similar policy for self-harm postings because they were also having the same problem. On their website, “thinspo” has a layer of spam and many of the photos and associated links on their site will take you to an Amazon homepage. For now, Facebook users cannot search the site by using keywords or hash tags which does limit the problem. Hopefully, now that Facebook has purchased Instagram alongside the launch of their own mobile app for cameras, the promotion of self-destructive behaviors like anorexia does not spread.

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