Another reason we should be cheering Pinterest on! #thinspiration

We’ve loved Pinterest for some time now for many reasons:

• We like that it’s personal AND business
• We’re in love with some of the infographics we find there
• We get traffic from there
• We’ve had clients from there
• We’ve met new people
• People have found us who aren’t on our other networks
• The visual aspect appeals to the artist inside us
• It’s also fun

All great reasons (especially the business ones – if you’re not on there, you should be!) but we’ve now found another one.

And this one’s a little more seriously.

Not so long ago Pinterest were getting a lot of stick because some boards were being devoted to promoting anorexia, ‘thinspiration’ (also known as ‘thinspo’) and eating disorders.

Young women – it was usually young women – were using the boards to post images of worryingly thin ‘role models’, tips on how to eat less, or fool people into thinking you were eating more, the best laxatives to use, ways to promote vomiting and more. They formed their own little communities on Pinterest and it was all pretty worrying.

Imagine if your daughter or friends were on Pinterest, and after searching for pictures of Victoria Beckham (as an example) were then faced with boards full of unhealthy ideas on how to become as thin as the former Spice Girl?

Shocking, isn’t it? We’d all hope that the people we know would be sensible enough to ignore the rest of the posts, but someone on the verge of an eating disorder could easily be tipped over the edge. Someone not knowing much about ‘thinspo’ could easily find out more in a pretty visual way – it almost seems harmless it’s so pretty.

So we were delighted to hear that Pinterest have taken action.

Anyone searching for ‘anorexia’, ‘thinspiration’ or ‘thinspo’ now is faced with this:

OK, it might not put off the really determined, or someone well into the grip of an eating disorder, but it’s a good start.

Well done Pinterest for taking a stand, listening to your critics, and trying to help those out there that need it.

My issue is that some of the boards are still there underneath that warning, and the warning may not be enough to put everyone off. Personally I’d like to see Pinterest refuse to host any boards with obviously anorexic names – it should be easy to do with a list of the offending terms. That would wipe these boards off Pinterest for good.

Does this make you think better of Pinterest? Or would you have liked to have seen them do more? Tell us in the comments.

Categorised in: Social Media

This post was written by Nikki