A person recovering from an eating disorder reported a health district’s Facebook post due to the wording it contained, it has been revealed.
Dangerous videos are being shared on social media about restrictive eating and exercise, while sponsored influencer posts are promoting unsafe weight loss and muscle bulking methods, a powerful federal inquiry has been warned.
Australia’s leading eating disorder group, The Butterfly Foundation, has told the inquiry into social media and online safety – announced by the Prime Minister Scott Morrison late last year – it regularly gets alerted to harmful content on platforms.
It is calling for appearance-related bullying to be included in online harm legislation and for a national inquiry into body image, like recently held in the UK.
“Social media influencers on appearance-focused platforms play a significant role in the promotion of unrealistic representations of bodies,” it writes in its submission.
“Many influencer accounts present heavily edited imagery of themselves, endorse products (which they are paid to advertise) and promote opinions on ‘healthy lifestyles’ which may appeal to their followers but bear no resemblance to evidence-based health advice.”
The submission warned of dangerous videos being shared on social media where people engaged in restricting dieting to lose excessive amounts of weight.
“This type of content could encourage risky eating and exercise behaviours which are known triggers for eating disorders,” it said.
It said they had been alerted to both organic and sponsored posts with harmful imagery.
“It is within this context that we observe extremely unsafe weight loss and/or muscle bulking methods being promoted to impressionable audiences, such as children and adolescents,” it wrote.
The foundation also warned that other public health campaigns, while well-intentioned, could contain harmful framing and triggering content.
One example it pointed to was a now-deleted post made by Western Sydney Local Health District in April which referred to “burning off” foods.
The post, which refers to “Covid kilos”, shows that a mocha coffee takes 53 minutes to burn off, while a muffin takes 48 minutes.
“While there are no problems with promoting physical activity, the term “burning off” frames eating as something negative, while exercise is also framed in negative terms as a compensatory behaviour,” the submission says, noting a person recovering from an eating disorder alerted them to it.
“The content of this post was triggering for our community … this type of thinking and compensatory behaviour is a key feature of many eating disorders.”
A spokesman for the health district said that they were committed to striking the right balance in communicating important lifestyle health advice to the community.
The Butterfly Foundation said it worked consistently to improve safety on social media platforms but it did not get federal government funding to undertake that work.
“As a charity our small team of communications professionals is vastly outnumbered by the resources of social media companies and advertisers,” it said.
Originally published as Butterfly Foundation warns of dangerous diet and exercise videos circulating on social media
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