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Social Media - Shaping the future of Exercise

Without doubt the rise of the influence of Social Media has quickly started to assist and influence our lives, across a broad spectrum of age, culture, ethnicity and is a global phenomenon. This has been helped by wireless technology developments as advances in sensor technology. It dominates the media as a force for ethically good and bad depending on your standpoint and is been polarising across all areas of human interaction. There are two fields to explore Social Media and Wearable Technology (WT).

Sport Wearable Technology (WT)

It is of no surprise that it is a feature of professional sport, starting with Polar, (2015) initially it was used for metric collection of heart rate, the industry has since diversified collecting biometric data such as heart rate, speed, distance, acceleration and power as well as collision impact (rugby) and execution skills all in real time, GoPro and Adidas are 2 examples of market leaders in team and individual sports respectively. The use of sport tech has become more apparent in amateur sports and everyday exercise.

Continuing the focus on elite sport, technology is now essential in elite sport for improving sport performance, this is a trend in amateur sport as well Seçkin et al., (2023). It provides vital information for coaches, health professionals and the athletes feeding into Swan’s (2013) notion of a ‘Quantified Self’ described as ‘The quantified Self (QS) is any individual engaged in the self-tracking of any kind of biological, physical, behavioural, or environmental information'. Technology can now help reduce injury and monitor recovery and MC10 (an electronic company) have developed wearable flexible patches with sensors that monitor respiration rate, hydration, and activity depending on body placement.

Tattoo systems are in development one promising study uses electronic tattoos comprising MXenes and liquid metal microcapsules fabricated by spray deposition onto the skin creating a bifunctional interface (Wang et al., 2024)

However, there are ethical considerations that the athlete and the team around them should consider. The demarcation between sports health data and personal health data is blurred and highlights and ambiguity as to who owns the collected data. Also, worth considering is that there can be abuse of data sharing of an athlete’s unique data and violations of their privacy. This includes medical information about an athlete’s physiology which they would classify as sensitive/confidential. Rush & Osborne (2022) found that collegiate athletes were at risk of significant concerns related to athlete privacy, data misuse, and exploitation, despite the considerable benefits offered by WT for data acquisition and analysis. It is probably not surprising that most professional sport clubs are wary of using live tracking WT due to the risks of cyber attacks or data breaches that would significantly impact the sport (Casher, 2019).

These concerns can be opened up and expanded on for amateur WT exercisers. There is a still a risk about unique data being shared e.g.

• Data leaks or breaches falling into the wrong hands from WT collection data.
• Data Security leading to access without permission, manipulation or loss of data, with compromise data protection and invalidates accuracy, integrity, and confidentiality of the information collected by the WT.
• Legal - any breach could put the wearer and manufacturer at risk of legal action.
• Ethical Concerns – these range from the equity and unbiased provision of WT across sport and users to the safeguarding of ethical principles around data collection, privacy and user rights.

Social Media (SM)

Social media is everywhere and it is a part of elite athletes’ lifestyles how they manage their personal use and the media profile they portray.

Tate et al., (2015) found that in Type 2 diabetes participants the use of social media and video gaming (Wi-Fi) when matched to personality type had the potential to reduce sedentary screen time and engage participants in exercise. Durau et al., (2022) in their article found that perceived powerful, trustworthy, and attractive SM influencers could increase men’s and women’s physical activity, while gender was an influence on health-related variables.

A longitudinal study of Fitocracy, an online fitness tracker, over 4 years by Jurgens et al., (2021) found that individuals’ exercising habits follow meaningful behaviours matching different motivations, which had strong demographic biases dependent on gender and age. The researchers identified the social phenomena of the social media platform, social influences. Community and group behaviours as future points of research.

These research paper seem to match the idea of the Big 5 (or the 5 factor Model) accredited to Costa and McCrae for further later developments beyond its inception in the 1960s, plus research on demographics and culture. Social media can reach out into the 100,000s as the recent Covid-19 pandemic demonstrated to engage us with Physical Activity (PA) and offers a wide variety of exercise opportunities that may not be in reach of all members of the population as a F2F sessions as possible barriers may prevent participation ( financial, distance, social group, unavailable in region, limited sessions, gender etc).There has also been an increase in hybrid programs where coach offer F2F and online sessions which continue to offer either a group session or individualised session which offers variation and choice for individuals meeting the needs of both highly organised and more laisse-faire individuals.

However, there are limitations the biggest is that participants may not disclose pre-existing medical conditions to an online class that may have a significant impact on their success and health if they take part. This coupled with possible trending/fad exercise routines that do not properly tackle the participants individual needs or are delivered by untrained influencers is also a concern for the health of users.

Social Media can be seen to be striving for the perfect Body Image, that may not be obtainable as unrealistic comparisons made to elite athletes and this can lead to demotivation from exercise activities. Connected to this is the ideal of Fitspiration content which can also demotivate as the exercises are aimed at extreme fitness athletes, leaving other participants feeling inadequate. There may be an over reliance on data metric that focusses too much on extrinsic rewards (daily step count) rather than intrinsic rewards (enjoyment of the activity) which also may lead to demotivation and negative affect due to the pressure and stress created (Deci & Ryan, 1985). Seeking the external validation of social media followers as an extrinsic reward if it starts to peter out can lead to burnout or amotivation from exercise completely.

Social Media and Wearable Technology can reach many more people and be a significant health intervention, if tailored to the specific personality and demographic needs of individuals and groups. It is vital that it managed by professional exercise practitioners who are able to ensure health and ethic safeguards are in place and constantly monitored and that feedback is available to develop intrinsic and extrinsic rewards and goal setting.

Bibliography

Casher, C. Moneyball in the Era of Biometrics: Who Has Ownership over the Biometric Data of Professional Athletes. Dalhous. J. Leg. Stud. 2019, 28, 1

Chalfen, R. (2014). “Your panopticon or mine? ‘Incorporating wearable technology's Glass and GoPro into visual social science”. Visual Studies, Vol. 29, No. 3, pp. 299-310

Costa, P. T., Jr., & McCrae, R. R. (1985). The NEO Personality Inventory manual. Odessa, FL: Psychological Assessment Resources.

Durau, J., Diehl, S., & Terlutter, R. (2022). Motivate me to exercise with you: The effects of social media fitness influencers on users’ intentions to engage in physical activity and the role of user gender. Digital Health, 8.

Gonzalez, E., Mitra, S., & Turel, O. (2020). Motivational Impacts on Intent to Use Health-Related Social Media. Journal of Computer Information Systems, 60, 136 - 145.

Jurgens, D., McCorriston, J., & Ruths, D. (2021). An Analysis of Exercising Behavior in Online Populations. International Conference on Web and Social Media.

Wang, L., Lin, Y., Yang, C., Wang, Q., Fang, T., Bai, C., Wang, J. and Kong, D., 2024. Spray-on electronic tattoos with MXene and liquid metal nanocomposites. Chemical Engineering Journal, p.157504.

Polar UK, (2015). “Innovations | Polar UK”. Retrieved from http://www.polar.com/uk-en/ about_polar/ who_we_are/innovations.

BBC Sport, (2015). “Saracens wear 'concussion' devices ”. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.co.uk/ sport/0/rugby-union/30671380 [Accessed 4 Jan. 2015]

Rush, C.; Osborne, B. Benefits and Concerns Abound, Regulations Lack in Collegiate Athlete Biometric Data Collection. J Leg. Asp. Sport 2022, 32, 62.

Seçkin, A.Ç., Ate¸S, B., Seçkin, M. Review on Wearable Technology in Sports: Concepts, Challenges and Opportunities. Appl. Sci. 2023, 13, 10399

Swan, M. (2013). “The Quantified Self: Fundamental Disruption in Big Data Science and Biological Discovery”. Big Data, Vol. 1, No. 2, pp. 85-99.

Tate, D.F., Lyons, E.J., & Valle, C.G. (2015). High-Tech Tools for Exercise Motivation: Use and Role of Technologies Such as the Internet, Mobile Applications, Social Media, and Video Games. Diabetes Spectrum : A Publication of the American Diabetes Association, 28, 45 - 54.

Ira De N'Yeurt Thanx brother

Time efficient and capture larger population. Reduce mobility or Travel cost and contact.