More disturbing than the porn was my teen’s secret anorexia diaries. Across various Xanga accounts, she meticulously tracked her daily calorie intake (often below 600 per day). She’d post inspirational photos (“thinspiration”) of rail-thin models, and tally up her binges and purges. “I’m sinking deeper and deeper back into anorexia,” she wrote. “Believing that food is disgusting, that we are all gluttonous fat pigs that consume calorie after calorie.” This was in the early days of the Pro-Ana movement, where women promote anorexia and bulimia, personified respectively as “Ana” and “Mia,” as a lifestyle rather than a disease. My teen would faint. She’d go to the hospital. She’d talk to a therapist. She’d have passive-aggressive conversations about food with people who just didn’t understand. She’d eat only ice cubes and gum (10 calories). On those days, she wrote, she felt “light and weightless, like the wind would carry [her] away at any moment.”
Once my teen’s problems got serious, it wasn’t fun anymore, it was scary. At that point, I was possibly the only person who had connected my teen’s various accounts and could trace these anonymous diaries back to their writer. I probably knew more about her than her family and friends did. Maybe not. But I knew when she lost her virginity, and with whom, and how it made her feel. I knew about her experimenting with smoking and drinking. I knew her deepest insecurities. I knew she hated her therapist. Did I have an obligation to say something? To essentially dox my teen? To whom? And what kind of reaction would I get? Excuse me, Mr. So-and-So, I’ve been stalking your daughter on the Internet for the past two years, and I’m concerned about—what’s that? You’re calling the cops?
Join the conversation as a VIP Member