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Page: << Prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | Next >> One hundred and eighty-two people responded to the survey -- 76 teens and 106 parents.
The good news was that nearly half of all the teens hadn't visited an eating disorder Web site. The bad news was that 41 percent had visited a pro-eating disorder Web site, while 36 percent had visited a pro-recovery Web site. Twenty-five percent had been to both types of sites.
Ninety-six percent of the teens who went to pro-eating disorder sites reported gleaning new weight-loss or purging information from the sites. More alarmingly, 46 percent of those who went to a pro-recovery Web site said they had gained new information about different weight-loss techniques.
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About 53 percent of parents knew there were pro-eating disorder Web sites, but just about as many parents thought their children weren't visiting these sites. Only 28 percent had brought up the subject of eating disorder Web sites with their teen. Almost two-thirds of parents were unaware that there were pro-recovery Web sites on the Internet.
Users of pro-eating disorder Web sites were significantly more likely to have required hospitalization than teens who didn't frequent those sites -- 3.9 percent versus 1.1 percent, respectively.
"Kids are using these sites and getting information from them. Parents should be discussing what kind of information they're learning, and it's important for parents to see if the information is accurate," Peebles said.
Dr. Alexander Sackeyfio, an eating disorder specialist at Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Mich., said, "This is something that all of us who treat eating disorders struggle with. We want to present information in a way that we hope will inform, but not in a way that might encourage someone to make their symptoms even worse."
But, he added, he doesn't think either type of Web site generates these destructive behaviors in the first place. He pointed out that there is a lot of health misinformation on the Internet and that most people don't follow ill-advised advice they see on the Web.
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