So how does a community go from seemingly harmless to life-threatening?

Through pro-eating disorder communities, a sense of bonding and belonging occurs. Feeling less alienated may lead teens to believe that these behaviors are beneficial instead of revealing the life-threatening truth behind the disorders themselves. Pictures that promote positive beliefs about unhealthy bodies may encourage more unhealthy behavior. Further, the more teens become engaged in these communities, the more they lose touch with reality and may fall into even more eating-disordered behaviors. 

Quite frankly, one of the most terrifying of these movements revolves around the “Pro-Ana” concept. That’s because Pro-Ana is extremely popular -- and extremely dangerous. For example, one website, called “Thin Intentions Forever,” chronicles a blogger’s pride in restricting calories to be thin. The blogger even goes as far as to list 58 ways to cut calories -- in alarming ways. One of the scariest of these suggestions says that “friends will only get in the way,” so “avoid them until you reach your goals.” In another section of the website, the blogger suggests that laxatives and caffeine pills are “good to have.” In other words, this blogger is teaching teens how to die by way of anorexia, though the blogger is clearly in denial about the life-threatening nature of this concept.

The problem is that teens find sites like these by way of hashtags. Some of these hashtags are decipherable, like #thighgap, which the McAfee Security Consumer Blog says reflects teens who want to be so thin that their thighs don’t touch. However, this doesn’t make hashtags like these any less scary. If parents aren’t looking for eating disorder-related hashtags, teen behavior could skate under the radar. This means that parents may not be aware of a teen’s eating disorder until it’s already out of control. 

Obviously, this isn’t the only hashtag to look for in the way of eating disorders. McAfee says that other examples of hashtags that are reflective of eating disorders can include:#thinspo, #thinspiration, and #ana. All of these hashtags are said to promote eating disorders in general.