Skip to main content

"I just want to be skinny.": A content analysis of tweets expressing eating disorder symptoms.

Author
Abstract
:

There is increasing concern about online communities that promote eating disorder (ED) behaviors through messages and/or images that encourage a "thin ideal" (i.e., promotion of thinness as attractive) and harmful weight loss/weight control practices. The purpose of this paper is to assess the content of body image and ED-related content on Twitter and provide a deeper understanding of EDs that may be used for future studies and online-based interventions. Tweets containing ED or body image-related keywords were collected from January 1-January 31, 2015 (N = 28,642). A random sample (n = 3000) was assessed for expressions of behaviors that align with subscales of the Eating Disorder Examination (EDE) 16.0. Demographic characteristics were inferred using a social media analytics company. The comprehensive research that we conducted indicated that 2,584 of the 3,000 tweets were ED-related; 65% expressed a preoccupation with body shape, 13% displayed issues related to food/eating/calories, and 4% expressed placing a high level of importance on body weight. Most tweets were sent by girls (90%) who were ≤19 years old (77%). Our findings stress a need to better understand if and how ED-related content on social media can be used for targeting prevention and intervention messages towards those who are in-need and could potentially benefit from these efforts.

Year of Publication
:
0
Journal
:
PloS one
Volume
:
14
Issue
:
1
Number of Pages
:
e0207506
Date Published
:
2019
URL
:
http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0207506
DOI
:
10.1371/journal.pone.0207506
Short Title
:
PLoS One
Download citation