‘Worrying lack of moderation’: how eating disorder posts proliferate on X

Paige Rivers at her parents’ home in Birmingham. She was diagnosed with anorexia aged 10 but is now training to be a nurse. Photograph: Gary Calton/The Observer

Debbie was scrolling through X in April when some unwelcome posts appeared on her feed. One showed a photo of someone who was visibly underweight asking whether they were thin enough. In another, a user wanted to compare how few calories they were eating each day.

Debbie, who did not want to give her last name, is 37 years old and was first diagnosed with bulimia when she was 16. She did not ­follow either of the accounts behind the posts, which belonged to a group with more than 150,000 members on the social media site.