YouTube Updates Rules for Eating Disorder Content: What to Know – CNET [CNET]

YouTube is expanding rules and limiting more content that involves eating disorders or behavior that may be related to eating disorders, the company announced Tuesday. 

The Google-owned video streaming site already has community guidelines in place that have prohibited content that “glorifies or promotes” eating disorders, Dr. Garth Graham, director of YouTube Health, wrote in a blog post. But in the coming weeks, additional guidelines will be added to prohibit content that contains “imitable” behavior that may inspire people at risk of developing an eating disorder to copy, Graham said. 

Examples of this will include content that shows severely restricting calories or purging. Weight-based bullying as it relates to eating disorders will also be prohibited, according to the post.

An eating disorder is a mental health condition that disrupts the way someone eats to the point where it interferes with their daily life or becomes a threat to their health. Common types include anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and binge-eating disorder. Disordered eating may be described as an unhealthy set of behaviors around foods that can involve restricting food or obsessing over it, but not to the diagnostic extent of an eating disorder. 

The content viewers are exposed to in the media may be one of the cultural or social factors that can make a person more susceptible to developing disordered eating patterns, especially in children and teens. YouTube says it worked with experts, including the National Eating Disorder Association and the Asociación de Lucha contra la Bulimia y Anorexia, to develop the new guidelines. Outside advice from health experts will inform what counts as behavior that may cause copycat disordered eating and be taken down. 

In addition to widening the range of what may be in violation of the community guidelines on eating disorder content, YouTube will put into place some age restrictions on certain content that may be educational for some viewers, but doesn’t have the same value for kids and teens. YouTube says that this means you won’t be able to view related content if you’re signed out of your account, or if the video is embedded on another website.

The guidelines “will take some time to fully ramp up,” Graham said. They also don’t mean that every video that features an eating disorder topic or dieting subject will be prohibited. Videos that follow the site’s rules for educational, documentary, scientific and artistic content will be allowed. 

“Context will be key when it comes to this often nuanced content,” Graham said. 

Read more: The Dark Side of ‘What I Eat in a Day’ Videos