Shut Down Pro-Ana Websites

With the birth of the Internet over a decade ago, a community of anti-recovery anorexics known as Pro-Ana was born as well.

This unique group, comprised primarily of teenage girls and women battling anorexia nervosa, has grown to immense proportions in recent years, due in particular to the fact that people use the Internet so regularly.

Pro-Ana websites are typically created on other websites that offer free, ad-supported hosting (Xanga, Yahoo!, etc.), but several have been shut down. (For example, Yahoo!, thanks to Holly Hoff, eventually banned all Pro-Ana sites;) however, due to the vastness of the Internet, there were (and still are) plenty of places for Pro-Ana communities to hide.

With every hosting site that would ban Pro-Ana, more Pro-Ana sites would resurface under disguised names and on different homepage sites (Leslie Regan Shade).

The use of the Internet as a host on which this parasitic community thrives is the heart of the problem; the users are free to exchange false and potentially deadly information on how to stay anorexic; moreover, the audience of impressionable young women these misguided messages are reaching is infinite.

My intent in petitioning against this group of people is to spread awareness on the dangers of the “pro-ana” message, while also petitioning against the Internet; albeit a valuable resource, the Internet is a technology that is, in this context, lethal to the well-being of Western society.