In fitness and in health: women’s safe navigation of fitness on social media
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Date
2025-02-27
Authors
Peelo Dennehy, Doireann
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Volume Title
Publisher
University College Cork
Published Version
Abstract
The proliferation of online fitness content in recent years has increased the availability and accessibility of health and fitness information. Emerging research identifies concerns associated with using social media for fitness, including negative impacts on health and mental health, which are reportedly worse for women. Despite these concerns, digital fitness is one of the largest niches on social media and has garnered attention in the field of HCI.
Against this backdrop, this thesis explores women’s safe navigation of social media for fitness. This PhD details users’ engagement with fitness content across platforms, focusing on their perceived safe navigation. These findings can help us support users’ active and critical cross-platform use for fitness on social media.
Across three studies, this work explores women’s use of social media for fitness, paying particular attention to their perspectives on online safety. Firstly, this thesis details a systematic review that contributes to our understanding of women’s use of social media for fitness by identifying their multifaceted and cross-platform engagement. Then, through in-depth interviews and surveys, this work describes competent and caring users and identifies their capability to navigate digital fitness safely and their expressed concern for younger users. Finally, through a series of exploratory workshops, this thesis investigates the development of this capability and, in response to their concerns, attempts to translate it into a game-based intervention.
Findings indicate the contextual and relational nature of navigating digital fitness. This implies that safe use requires an understanding of the fitness space, for example, that content is highly curated by creators, and a knowledge of the intricacies of nutrition and exercise. The relational nature of navigation describes how participants make sense of content and others online, relying heavily on other members of their communities, friends, and family. By drawing on their lived experience, education and relationships, users have learned to safely navigate fitness on social media over time. Users also report making and learning from mistakes, as they recognise the potential harms associated with fitness content and empathise with users who may be susceptible to these harms. This thesis explores how these learned competencies may be developed into an intervention. Focusing on the community learning users describe, the findings are translated into a cooperative game-based intervention for improving fitness-related digital literacies to promote the relational aspect of learning.
This thesis contributes to the field of HCI by accounting for women’s safe use of digital fitness. It provides further evidence of the context-specific nature of digital literacy and sheds light on the potential for context-specific digital literacy interventions to promote online safety. Therefore, this thesis helps those researching and designing for safe social media use to make informed decisions towards safer, more empowered social media use.
In conclusion, this PhD contributes to our evolving understanding of the complexities of fitness digital literacies. It underscores the importance of supporting situated learning and facilitating interpersonal learning for complex topics. It also positions games as a suitable intervention for this learning by encouraging collaboration, which is key to relational sensemaking. Moving forward, this research calls for the recognition of, and design for, the relational and context-dependent nature of digital literacy to promote safe and agentic online fitness experiences.
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Keywords
Women , Social media , Fitness , Digital fitness literacy , HCI , Human-Computer Interaction
Citation
Peelo Dennehy, D. 2025. In fitness and in health: women’s safe navigation of fitness on social media. PhD Thesis, University College Cork.