Whenever the subject of social media and teenagers comes up, it seems someone wants to talk about eating disorders. Conventional wisdom says Instagram and other highly visual platforms promote negative body image and push young people—mostly young women—to take dieting to extremes. Some politicians even want to hold tech companies legally liable when young users develop eating disorders.
Suggestions like these make me want to bang my head against a wall. They represent a dreadful misread of both eating disorders and technology, as well as the limits of content moderation and the functions of eating disorder communities and content.
