New Online Course by St. Pölten University of Applied Sciences Teaches Adolescents to Approach Social Media Trends Critically

#fitspiration – Questionable Health Trend for Teens

In the project “FIVE – #Fitspiration Image Verification”, researchers of the St. Pölten University of Applied Sciences explore the influence of the social media hashtag #fitspiration on the gender stereotypes, health behaviours, and body perceptions of young people.

ST. PÖLTEN, Austria, Sept. 10, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — #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 have become a fixed component of Austrian teenagers’ lives. Unfortunately, there 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. This is problematic because young people are particularly vulnerable”, explains Theres Rathmanner, co-project manager and Researcher at the Institute of Health Sciences of the St. Pölten UAS.

Analysing FitFluencers

The research team of the St. Pölten UAS analysed on which social media channels adolescents aged 14 to 19 consumed the most #fitspiration contents, and how they perceive the images shown there.

“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

Within the framework of a mixed-methods study with teenagers from Vienna and Lower Austria, the researchers conducted an analysis of the social media accounts of the most well-known #fitspiration influencers in the German-speaking area.

Although the teenagers appeared to have very good reflection skills with regard to both 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.

Based on the results of the study, the team developed an online course and an interactive image forensics tool for 14- to 19-year-olds. 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 marketing tricks used on social media.

About FIVE

The interdisciplinary project was carried out under the leadership of the St. Pölten UAS in collaboration with the publishing company Hölzel and gender expert Bettina Prokop. The project receives funding through the Austrian Research Promotion Agency.

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

The online course #fitspiration will be available in German from February 2025. School licences can already be ordered now from https://hoelzel.at/produkt/fitspiration-ebook/.

About the St. Pölten University of Applied Sciences

The St. Pölten UAS is a provider of performance-oriented higher education with a strong practical relevance in the areas of Media, Communications, Management, Digital Technologies, Computer Science, Security, Rail Technology, Health Sciences, and Social Sciences. Today the university offers approximately 4,000 students a future-oriented education in six departments with numerous study programmes and continuing education programmes, always cultivating close ties between teaching and research. As a European University, the St. Pölten UAS manages the European university alliance E³UDRES² (Engaged – European – Entrepreneurial University as Driver for European Smart and Sustainable Regions) and works on the development of smart and sustainable regions together with partner universities in nine countries.

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