Eating disorders 2.0: The hidden fragility between social networks and eating disorders
The sites Pro-Ana e Pro-Mia belong to the neo-pitfalls of the gods social and new technologies accompanying the birth of new frontiers of the food disorders called 2.0.
We are faced with a real string effect, where each branch constitutes a disturbed way of dealing with nutrition, nutrition and body image, here we find the puppeteers of Eating Behavior Disorders (DCA): fitnessApp, applications for the control of caloric assimilation, Instagram thriving with darlings of fitness and muscle gain, virtual personal trainers. They are tools that can lead to sports addictions, excessive food control up to real phobias for certain foods!
Teenagers try aesthetic models, or lifestyles that are spread by social networks in a rampant way and one is convinced that one must inevitably adhere to them without implementing a critical sense which contemplates flexibility and focus on substance, on being, in favor ofappearance and to appear.
Today we have to deal with abstract entities made of virtual people who govern and direct the identities of others, we are faced with new websites called Pro-Ana and Pro-Mia.
The sites Pro-Ana e Pro-Mia are sites in favor ofanorexia and bulimia, identified not only as almost human or rather divine entities, but also as a "general creed, a lifestyle" according to the site-goers, who are mostly teens. In these groups there are not only conversations and commandments to resist hunger, but real photos of girls who take the example of pathologically extreme thinness. A correlation has been identified between the role of social networks,peer influence relative to the body image, the restrictive diets, low body weight, the DCA , low self-esteem of teenagers (Hutchinson and Rapee, 2007). Yes, because identity fragility is based on low self-conception, on how much children today tend to estimate themselves less and less.
Birth and growth of DCA 2.0
Today in 2018 we are witnessing a wave of anorexic repentance, on Instagram you can find multiple profiles of girls who in the past have had a DCA and who today define themselves as promoters of the well-being of healthy nutrition, show sculptural bodies at the limits with body builder overtraining, not considering the concrete fact that they have only changed the dysfunctional food behaviors proceeding towards obsessive ways underlying the main problems of non-acceptance of one's body and identity deficiency.
- THEOrthorexia: exaggerated attention to the quality of the food in order to eat healthily;
- La Drunkorexia: DCA new and dangerous. It consists in eating little until fasting and then compensating for the calorie intake with alcoholic drinks;
- Il Chewing and Spitting: the practice of chewing and spitting without actually introducing food into the body sometimes overlaps restrictive Anorexia or other psychic pathologies;
- La Bigorexia o Vigorexia: characterized by the abuse of physical exercise and high-protein diets;
- La Pregorexia, the DCA of pregnancy, these are women obsessed with the fear of gaining weight in gestation and for this reason they undergo prolonged training and low-calorie diets (WHO data, 5th February 2018).
Who are the easiest preys of these pitfalls?
What to do to avoid joining DCA 2.0?
To be present, work on what you are, talk to the boys and take an interest in them and what they are beyond aesthetics and clothes, beyond BlackFriday! Accept body changes and accept physiological changes.
How to identify risk factors?
La fragility Sometimes he hides himself under the guise of swagger, arrogance and ostentation of a force that they would like to have, but which in reality is neither deep nor stable. L'isolation,excessive use of the internet can put us on alert. In these cases it is important to talk, rather than forbid access to the web, understand what interests them and discuss them constructively.
How to understand where the limit lies between a healthy lifestyle and one obsessed with healthy living?
Ariadne Sirolli
Notes on the author. Arianna Sirolli: Psychoanalytic psychotherapist, psychologist, clinical and legal expert psychologist, AIR registered rorschachist, expert in the protected hearing of minors in the expert field. Ordinary member Psy + Onlus. For years he has been dealing with eating disorders and mentalization. Other areas of work: minors, offenders, unaccompanied foreign minors, minors in temporary custody at protected structures, gender-based violence. For several years he has been dealing with psychotherapy with adults, couples, families and teenagers.
food disorders, supply, social networks, identity, pregnancy, adolescence
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