“If I Unfollow Them, It's Not a Dig at Them”: A Narrative Analysis of Instagram Use in Eating Disorder Recovery

Abstract

Engaging with the encounters and interactions people have on social media opens the opportunity to think differently about eating disorder (ED) recoveries. We used narrative thematic analysis to explore the experiences of eight participants who regularly use Instagram and who are in recovery from EDs. Our analyses illustrate how participants engaged with Instagram in an active and agentic way, navigating discourses about EDs including who is impacted by EDs and who has access to ED recovery. Participants’ stories illustrate how engaging with Instagram in recovery sometimes meant disengaging from content that was not helpful in their lives and recoveries. They discussed the agency of algorithms and how unexpected content could derail them from using Instagram for connection and community. Participants’ stories also demonstrate how healthist discourses infuse social media content ostensibly about recovery in a way that requires the user to be active in moderating the content they engage with. Grounding our conclusions in work on healthism and biopedagogies, we encourage a systemic approach that focuses on what shifts might be made to reduce the need for people in recovery to be hypervigilant about the content they consume in recovery. Online slides for instructors who want to use this article for teaching are available on PWQ's website at http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/03616843231166378.