Over the past decade, fitness-themed social media posts have become slightly less focused on body image and more focused on motivating people to participate in physical activity. research suggests. However, researchers warn that much content still risks perpetuating weight bias due to the lack of body diversity depicted in posts.
The research team was led by Dr Beth Bell from the University of York and also included Dr Catherine Talbot from Bournemouth University. Their findings were published in the journal Psychology of Popular Media.
“Social media content aimed at inspiring fitness is hugely popular, but it is markedly targeted and focuses on attractive bodies, rather than simply helping people get fit and healthy. “It’s been criticized for being so accurate,” explained Dr Catherine Talbot, senior lecturer in psychology at Bournemouth University. . “Much of the content also contains problematic messages that can shame people for their dietary choices and behaviors,” she added.
Most studies that analyze this content are based on posts that are more than five years old. Since then, attitudes toward body positivity have increased in the media and society, so the researchers decided to see if fitness content had evolved since their initial studies.
The researchers looked at Instagram posts containing the hashtag #fitness, which has grown in popularity over the past decade, increasing from 1.8 million posts in 2014 to nearly 20 million in May 2021. They looked at his 1,000 posts from 2021 and compared them to 1,000. We looked at posts from the same period in 2014 and analyzed the style of posted images and accompanying text.
They found significant differences between the two sets of posts. In 2021, his Fitspiration posts have significantly more content about exercise and fewer messages about dieting. There are also fewer people in the images adhering to cultural body ideals such as thinness and muscularity, and there are fewer signs of objectification through, for example, an individual’s pose or clothing.
In 2021, texts that explicitly emphasized the connection between fitness and sexuality were less prevalent, and texts that focused on exercise-related knowledge and guidance were more common.
“Our analysis shows that over time, #fitspiration posts became more focused on exercise and slightly less focused on appearance,” Dr. Talbot said. “However, images in 2021 continue to perpetuate problematic norms due to a lack of body diversity. To minimize risk, fitspiration content creators and consumers Both need to be aware of these issues we have identified,” she concluded.