dsiplaced

A few of my friends have created a handful of great websites and made dream jobs for themselves in the process. Their flagship is 43Things. A social networking site that rallies around the question “What do you want to do with your life?” It’s a powerful question. Calling on daydreams and potential. Preparedness and opportunity. It speaks of crossroads and just being better. We all want to be better. We all want to do more. The how, the what, the when of being better – that’s the stuff of 43Things. That’s its soul. In just over two years time a million people have signed up to answer that question and they’ve answered it in a million different ways.

999,997 of them great.

But the bad apples. Spam. Porn. Bullies. The small company that dared to ask the question found themselves getting answers back that they weren’t expecting. Some were easy to solve. Spammer hunts conducted with nary a thought. Others were more challenging. The user created goals range from the mundane and popular to the down right upsetting. The potential moral and ethical dilemmas weren’t lost on the people who created this site. They talk about thought police and free speech. Open communities, self regulation. They take their work and their role seriously. The goals that kept them up at night came from unexpected sources.

Teenage girls.

Not just any teenage girls. Vulnerable girls struggling under societal pressures. Internalizing those pressures. Messed up body images. Misplaced ideals. These girls had the goal of becoming or staying anorexic. They filled the forums with tips and ideas. They supported each other in their quests for protruding clavicles and thighs no bigger than our wrists. What to do with them? What to do?

First was a message. Well worded, well thought out. Don’t hurt yourself. Please get help. Here is help. It was one of the few goals tagged for this sort of communication from above. Not parental in tone, purposefully not parental. Just kind and simple with links to places they could go for help. But seeing a message when you are in the throws of a disease doesn’t solve anything. We all know it doesn’t solve anything. They knew it wouldn’t solve anything but what to do? What to do?

These girls were in their care. Accidentally, sure. Unwillingly, sure. But they were there nonetheless. Using their site to communicate harmful information, encouraging each other to do harmful things. This group of six 30somethings on Capitol Hill who had started a little internet company were thrust into the role of makeshift guidance counselors without the ability to call the parents, without the ability to even know who these girls actually were.

Step two was suspension. You posted a tip - your account was suspended. You posted encouragement - suspended. One by one, the accounts of these girls were canceled. One by one these girls would open new accounts, new user names, same problems. It was a never ending game of cat and mouse. The deletions only slowed them down, it never made them go away. Which they knew. Which we know. But what to do? What to do?

Now. It’s deletion of the goal. It’s turning off the forums. It’s shutting the lights off and going to bed. Party’s over. If you can find a pro-anorexia goal on 43Things all you’ll find is the well worded bulletin. All of the social networking features have been turned off. It’s static and silent. Unlike the countless unmanned blogs and family web sites that stay in suspended animation for years and years the silence and quiet found on these pages of an otherwise very busy social networking site have the creepiness of an empty airport. It’s just not supposed to be like that but how else can it be?

To say the story ends here would be wrong. The girls have moved around on 43Things. Their clumsy adolescent innocence in emailing 43Things in protest and playing this game of hide and seek only adds to the irony that I can’t put my finger on. Therapists, psychologists, national organizations want these communities quieted. It is the responsible thing to do. Without a doubt it is the right thing to do. For both the site and the girls.

So, why the heavy hearts?

Is it that a bunch of young girls with all their innocence, body hatred and low self-esteem are lost on the internet? Is it that the next place they find might not care enough to talk about what’s best, to consult with experts, to lose sleep? Could it be as common as when a new parent lets their baby cry herself to sleep for the first time? How doing what’s needed to separate ourselves from our children, cutting that cord again and again throughout their lives, is painful and gut wrenching and absolutely necessary each and every time we do it.