Article posted below
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Suicide and anorexia promotion sites must be addressed in online safety bill, parents and child-protection experts say
MARIE WOOLF
OTTAWA
PUBLISHED MARCH 30, 2023
Websites and online forums promoting suicide and eating disorders should fall within the scope of the federal government's forthcoming online safety bill, argue parents and child-protection experts who say the sites target the most vulnerable.
They want Ottawa to force platforms to remove online forums offering advice on suicide methods and to crack down on "pro-ana" and "thin-spiration" sites that encourage anorexia and other eating disorders by glorifying being extremely underweight.
Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez is expected to table the bill, designed to tackle online hate and abuse, this year.
Lianna McDonald, the executive director of the Canadian Centre for Child Protection and a member of an expert panel appointed by Mr. Rodriguez to determine which issues to address with the bill, said sites glorifying eating disorders and suicide are costing young people their lives and need to be "captured under the legislation."
"The other night I went on a call with two parents – just heartbreaking cases. In both cases their children had died by suicide," Ms. McDonald said. "These platforms are actively serving up this type of harmful material. We've heard from families where their kids are essentially trapped by these algorithms."
Many platforms already take down and block pro-ana sites – which include chatrooms and message boards where young women, in particular, post and compare photos of their emaciated physiques and offer tips on how to lose weight and stay drastically thin.
But after being taken down, such sites are often reposted under different hashtags or on different platforms.
The Globe and Mail located a number of them, including several on the social-networking site Tumblr, which it took down after being approached for comment.
Nicole Legg, who researches eating disorders at the University of Victoria and is a counsellor for people with such disorders, said pro-ana sites can reinforce behaviours of young women who already have body image issues.
The Globe also easily found a pro-suicide forum, where people encourage each other to take their own lives, even offering advice on how to do it. One post on Thursday said: "I think I just ate my very last meal."
Isabella, whose 21-year old son, Jaden, killed himself after visiting the suicide forum in early 2021, said the site needs to be taken down and the men behind it prosecuted.
The Globe is not naming the site to avoid promoting it. Its moderators did not respond to a request for comment.
Isabella – The Globe is not revealing her full name to protect her privacy – described her only son as "a poster boy for the first 20 years of his life." He was suffering from depression during the pandemic, when he could not see his friends or play the sports he enjoyed. He visited the forum and killed himself after being encouraged and coached there to do so, she said.
"He was in a deep depression and was maybe online searching for answers," she said. "They normalize suicides for people. They normalized it – they gave him specific instructions," according to screenshots she took of conversations Jaden had on the site.
She wants the online safety bill to tackle the suicide site, which is banned in some jurisdictions but not in Canada or the United States. It is still active, and the names of the men running it are known, but they have not been charged, she said.
"So I feel like my son's murdered and they're sitting there at their computers right now doing the same thing. Nothing, nothing is stopping them."
Google said its automated systems are designed to stop people from being exposed unexpectedly to harmful or shocking content.
"If people come to Google to search for information about self-harm, they see features promoting prevention hotlines that can provide critical help and support," said Shay Purdy, a Google spokesman. "We also block Autocomplete predictions for those searches. We balance these safeguards with our commitment to give people open access to information."
A search for the suicide site on Google did indeed turn up helplines for people considering suicide, as well as the website of Canada's Centre for Suicide Prevention.
Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, said it also had policies striking a balance between stopping people from seeing sensitive or upsetting content and giving them spaces to talk about their experiences. It said experts had advised the company that removing content about suicide and eating disorders could make people feel even more isolated.
It said it always removes content that encourages suicide, self-harm and eating disorders or offers suicide methods or instructions for drastic weight loss.
Tumblr declined requests for comment.
Laura Scaffidi, Mr. Rodriguez's spokeswoman, said "the status quo is unacceptable and what happens online doesn't stay online. It has real impacts on our children and in our communities."
"We will work collaboratively and constructively with platforms on this important issue," she added.
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I wouldn't even worry about it. After that sensationalist junk from NYT had its time in the sun it faded quickly.
And this too shall pass.
www.theglobeandmail.com
