Social Networking in the News: Helen Flanagan Posts Pro-Anorexia Messages

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2287321/Helen-Flanagan-heads-friends-causing-outrage-Twitter-praising-pro-anorexia-messages.html

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/tv/4822036/helen-flanagan-praises-pro-anorexia-pic.html?OTC-RSS&ATTR=TV

Helen Flanagan is a female celebrity that many girls and women look to as inspiration due to her role in the popular soap Coronation Street and appearence on I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here. Helen has hit a lot of controversy today due to promoting the new craze that encourages girls to be as skinny as possible called 'thinspiration'. Helen liked the link on Instagram, apparently not realising that her user activity was public and that all of her fans could then see she liked this notion. She is seen to be promoting an unhealthy image to her fans, as these are pro-anorexia messages. The worrying fact is that she has 27,000 followers on her instagram account who can see her liking images such as the one below.

The image Helen 'liked' on Instagram

This is just a simple easy mistake that Helen made. Celebrities now have to monitor their behaviour in every way as their fan bases have access to so many tools, thanks to the variety of social networks, which update them on their role models lives. Helen has admitted before to previously suffering from an eating disorder so many other suffers do follow her for inspiration on how they can also get over it.

Helen supposedly did not realise everyone could see her activity, and this is one of the issues surrounding social networks as people do not realise the power of the online world. Nothing posted online is completely private and no matter if you delete something it can be found again in an archive somewhere.All Helen did was like something and that information was shared with all her followers. Most activity on social networks can be viewed by anyone you have allowed to 'be your friend', 'follow you' etc. Therefore the content is spread fast for all to see and join in or copy. This is yet another aspect that helps to spread cyber-bullying and humiliation it causes.

People do not seem to be educated properly on the usage of these social networks which leads to problems such as this news story. It also reveals how something so simple as liking a picture can have a big impact on everyone else linked to your account and can have a lot to say about yourself. Cyber-bullies do not realise that what they are doing can be seen by everyone else, a problem is that this can get others to join in but it will also highlight to many the poor character of that individual.