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Viewership of pro-anorexia websites in seventh, ninth and eleventh graders
Kathleen Custers1, Jan Van den Bulck
1Leuven School for Mass Communication Research, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Parkstraat, Leuven, Belgium.
Objective:
To examine the prevalence of visiting pro-anorexia websites by 13-, 15- and 17-year old adolescents and to explore correlates of visiting such websites and predictors of anorexia nervosa (AN).
Method:
Questionnaire in a sample of 711 secondary school children from the 7th, 9th and 11th grade in Flanders, Belgium.
Results:
12.6% of the girls and 5.9% of the boys had visited such websites. In girls, visiting pro-anorexia websites was associated with a higher drive for thinness, worse perception of appearance and more perfectionism.
Conclusion:
The prevalence of visiting pro-anorexia sites is non-trivial and the significant correlations between viewership of pro-ana sites and predictors of AN suggest a potential for negative impact of exposure to pro-ana sites. We conclude with some speculative remarks on the potential threat of the existence of pro-ana sites to organized health care.
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