Young People’s Experiences of Viewing the Fitspiration Social Media Trend: Qualitative Study.
Open accessPublished version of a preprint
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Social media use has become ubiquitous in the lives of many people, especially young adults. A popular recent trend emerging on social media is that of posting and following 'Fitspirational' content - material that purports to motivate and showcase healthy lifestyle habits, particularly relating to exercise and diet. There is very limited existing literature on how engaging with this type of content influences people's psychological and physical heath. Initial studies have focused on concerns over potential negative effects on psychological wellbeing including body image, self-esteem and eating disorders. OBJECTIVE: We aimed to address a gap in the literature for exploratory research on this topic from the perspective of users. We used a qualitative approach to explore how people experience viewing Fitspiration on social media including why and how they engage with this material and how they perceive that it affects their thoughts, emotions, behaviour and health. METHODS: We recruited 20 young adults (14 females, 6 males, aged 18-25) who self-declared themselves to be Fitspiration followers to participate in either focus groups or individual interviews. We asked detailed, open-ended questions about their motivations for following Fitspiration, experiences of viewing this content and its perceived impact. We used inductive thematic analysis to derive themes that represented common and salient features of the data set. RESULTS: Four main themes were developed: 1) A tool with the potential to support healthy living, 2) Unrealistic, untrustworthy content, 3) Negative effects on emotional wellbeing, and 4) Vulnerability and protective factors. Following Fitspirational posts on social media can provide young people with knowledge and motivation that may support healthy lifestyle behaviours. However, a range of harms also appeared to arise from Fitspiration viewing ranging from minor annoyances and frustrations to more meaningful negative effects on psychological & physical health. These negative effects seemed to persist despite individuals acknowledging that the material can be unrealistic, and believing that they are personally equipped to minimise harms to themselves. CONCLUSIONS: This study suggests that Fitspiration on social media can be attractive and compelling for young people but appears to bring about negative as well as positive effects. Future research should aim to confirm the scale and intensity of positive and negative effects and investigate ways of harnessing desirable outcomes and minimising undesirable outcomes.
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Three studies indicated low social media literacy amongst participants, including difficulty switching off from damaging posts and an inability to recognise edited versus unedited posts.
“Three studies indicated low social media literacy amongst participants, including difficulty switching off from damaging posts and an inability to recognise edited versus unedited posts [63, 73, 82].”
From The social media diet: A scoping review to investigate the association between social media, body image and eating disorders amongst young people (2023) · cites this paper as [63]
The Results (Negative Effects on Emotional Well-Being; page not supplied) describe participants who kept viewing Fitspiration posts despite knowing they could be harmful, supporting the difficulty-switching-off portion. But the Discussion (Key Findings; page not supplied) says participants recognized that posters showed edited versions of themselves, contrary to the claimed inability to distinguish edited posts. (LLM, conf=0.88)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredComparisons on social media tended to be 'upward' and yielded feelings of inadequacy and self-loathing.
“Comparisons tended to be ‘upward’ and yielded feelings of inadequacy and self-loathing [53, 63, 68].”
From The social media diet: A scoping review to investigate the association between social media, body image and eating disorders amongst young people (2023) · cites this paper as [63]
The Results section, “Negative Effects on Emotional Well-Being” (page unavailable), reports that participants compared themselves with Fitspiration images and felt guilty or bad about their bodies; one said it was “hard to love me” after viewing fitness accounts. This supports the claimed feelings of inadequacy and self-loathing in that setting, but the paper does not establish that social-media comparisons generally tended to be upward. (LLM, conf=0.82)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredQualitative focus groups implied that social media and body image is perceived as a gendered subject, with boys feeling reluctant to admit adverse effects due to stigma or fear of emasculation.
“Qualitative focus groups implied that social media and body image is perceived as a gendered subject, with boys feeling reluctant to admit adverse effects due to stigma or fear of emasculation [63].”
From The social media diet: A scoping review to investigate the association between social media, body image and eating disorders amongst young people (2023) · cites this paper as [63]
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
The citation lists haven’t been fetched yet
References 19 · Cited by 82
Research works printed but not linked: 2
- [14]Palmer L Poppin bottles, getting wheysted. Exploring young mens engagement with fitspiration content and its consequential influences on attitudes and behaviour Journal of Promotional Communications 2015 425 445
- [15]Bishop F Yardley L Qualitative Assessment In; Ayers S, Baum A, McManus C, Newman S, Wallston K, Weinman J, West R. Cambridge Handbook of Psychology, Health and Medicine. 2nd ed 2007 Cambridge Cambridge University Press 314 319
- Authors
- Easton, S., Morton, K., Tappy, Z., Francis, D., & Dennison, L.
- Affiliations
- University of Southampton (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Dennison, Laura
- Venue
- Journal of Medical Internet Research
- Publisher
- JMIR Publications Inc.
- Published
- 2018-06-18
- Volume
- 20
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- e219
- ISSN
- 1438-8871 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC6028764
- OpenAlex
- W2809267319
- Cited by
- 82
- References
- 19
- Citations by year
- 2026: 5 · 2025: 16 · 2024: 13 · 2023: 17 · 2022: 17 · 2021: 7 · 2020: 5 · 2019: 2
- FWCI
- 7.95
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- cc-by
- Locations
- Journal of Medical Internet Research (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- ePrints Soton (University of Southampton) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Impact of Technology on Adolescents
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Eating Disorders and Behaviors
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Health and Lifestyle Studies
- Keywords
- fitspiration, social media, young adults, health motivation, physical activity, diet, body image, self-esteem, emotional well-being, perceived harm, user experience, healthy lifestyle behaviours
- MeSH terms
- Adolescent, Adult, Body Image, Female, Humans, Male, Self Concept, Qualitative Research, Young Adult, Social Media
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
