MySpace Diet-Related Advertising

We, the undersigned, express our concern over the worrisome diet-related advertising on the website MySpace.com. We believe that, as a site used by many teenagers, especially young girls, MySpace has an obligation to these users and should choose not to use such advertising.

According to the South Carolina Department of Mental Health, 8 million Americans suffer from an eating disorder. 7 million of those are women, the other 1 million are men. One in 200 women in America suffer from anorexia, and two to three in 100 American women suffer from bulimia. Also, eating disorders have the highest mortality rate out of all mental illness.

What's even more troubling is that anorexia is the third most common chronic illness among adolescents. 95\% of the people who have eating disorders are between the ages of 12 and 25. According to Quantcast.com's audience profile of MySpace.com (taken 11/30/08) 44\% of its demographic is between the ages of 18 and 34, 29\% is between the ages of 12 and 17, and 58\% of the visitors to MySpace are female. As stated earlier, women are the primary sufferers of eating disorders.

Seeing as how MySpace.com's primary demographic is also the group at highest risk for this mental illness, MySpace has a responsibility to protect its users by carefully choosing its advertising partners. Dieting-related sites such as (but not limited to) PamsFitBlog.com, AngieWeightLoss.com, EliasWeightLossStory.com, FlatBellyDietBlog.com, and GNS-Online.com should not be chosen as advertising partners out of care for MySpace's primary users.

We believe that MySpace is a caring company and should show how much it cares for its users by limiting business with diet-related companies.