#fitspiration: Questionable Health Trend for Teens

In the project “FIVE – #Fitspiration Image Verification”, researchers of the St. Pölten University of Applied Sciences explored the influence of the social media hashtag #fitspiration on the gender stereotypes, health behaviours, and body perceptions of young people. The research project was implemented in collaboration with the publishing company Hölzel Verlag GmbH and gender expert Bettina Prokop. Together, the research partners developed an online course for adolescents and schools which will be available from 2025.

The hashtag #fitspiration is a global health trend on social media with more than 20 million posts on the platform Instagram alone right now. While the trend behind #fitspiration is supposed, at first glance, to have positive health implications, extreme and unbalanced training and nutrition practices tend to be propagated, and one-sided gender norms communicated under its guise.

“Social media are a fixed component of Austrian teenagers’ lives. Unfortunately, they are also a playground for alleged health prophets and self-declared nutrition experts. It is, therefore, extremely important to teach adolescents to adopt a critical approach to social media contents and protagonists”, emphasises Elisabeth Höld, project manager and Senior Researcher at the St. Pölten UAS’ Institute of Health Sciences.

Learning to Handle Social Media

Young people in particular use social media as a source of information on numerous topics – health being one of them. To successfully classify this flood of information, they need adequate competencies in dealing with social media (“social media literacy”) and online health information (“ehealth literacy”). 

“Although today’s teenagers have grown up with smartphones and social media, they cannot automatically be assumed to have good social media literacy and ehealth literacy and to be able to competently deal with all this information. This is problematic because young people are particularly vulnerable – we have to enable them to approach these topics with competence”, explains Theres Rathmanner, co-project manager and Researcher at the Institute of Health Sciences of the St. Pölten UAS. “The involved adolescents showed a great deal of interest in the #fitspiration trend. They participated intensively in the development of the course, which allowed us to create teaching/learning materials that are in line with teenagers’ interests and empower them in their handling of social media.” 

Analysing FitFluencers

In the first step, the research team of the St. Pölten UAS analysed on which social media channels adolescents in upper secondary school (aged 14 to 19) consumed the most #fitspiration contents, what attracts them to these channels, and how they perceive images with the hashtag #fitspiration. In addition, the researchers examined which gender-, diversity-, and health-relevant contents are represented, and which correlations exist between the use of #fitspiration and gender identity, health behaviours, and body perception. 

“The analysis of #fitspiration photos on social media shows that image patterns tend to be highly problematic in terms of gender stereotypes, a lack of diversity, and unrealistic beauty ideals”, says Bettina Prokop, the external gender expert employed for the project. 

Online Course and Tools for Teenagers

Within the framework of a mixed-methods study with teenagers from Vienna and Lower Austria, the researchers conducted a content analysis of the social media accounts of the most well-known #fitspiration influencers in the German-speaking area. In addition, they carried out scientific body measurements, a questionnaire survey, focus group discussions, and laboratory tests on gaze behaviours and biosignals.

Although the teenagers appeared to have very good reflection skills with regard to both the handling of social media and societal expectations concerning body and gender, the results of the questionnaire survey showed room for improvement. Furthermore, the researchers found out that the teenagers were more likely to see themselves as overweight than scientific physical measurements suggested. The measurements of gaze behaviours showed that the teenagers tended to pay more attention to images featuring their own gender.

Based on the results of the study, the team developed an interdisciplinary online course with ten modules and an interactive image forensics tool for upper secondary school, which were then tested together with the pupils and their teachers. The idea of the course is to enable young people to take a critical stance towards body and gender stereotypes, the quality of health information, and the marketing tricks used on social media.

“We embedded the image forensics tool in an online course with ten parts that focuses on diverse topics related to the #fitspiration trend. The contents were developed by the experienced authors Andrea Motamedi und Petra Boogman who have been teachers themselves for many years. In this way, we can make an important contribution to training young people in the safe approach to digital media with the help of learning media”, states Ulrike Zdimal-Lang from Hölzel Verlag GmbH.

About FIVE – #Fitspiration Image Verification

The interdisciplinary project FIVE was carried out under the leadership of the St. Pölten UAS in collaboration with the publishing company Hölzel and gender expert Bettina Prokop between September 2021 and August 2014. The project received funding through the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG), the central national funding organisation to promote innovative power in Austria.

The research results were submitted to three scientific journals: the development of the online course to “Education and Information Technology”, data from the mixed-methods study to “Body Image”, and results from the content analysis of #fitspiration influencers to “Feminist Media Studies”.

Further information is available on the project website "FIVE – #Fitspiration Image VErification".

Online Course #fitspiration from 2025

The #fitspiration online course consisting of ten independent modules will be available from February 2025. School licences can already be pre-ordered at an introductory price of EUR 99.00 via hoelzel.at.

School licences are available now.