The growth of the digital environment provides tremendous opportunities to revolutionize health behavior change efforts. This paper explores the use of Web-based, mobile, and social media health behavior change interventions and determines whether there is a need for a face-to-face or an in-person component. It is further argued that that although in-person components can be beneficial for online interventions, a digital person-to-person component can foster similar results while dealing with challenges faced by traditional intervention approaches. Using a digital person-to-person component is rooted in social and behavioral theories such as the theory of reasoned action, and the social cognitive theory, and further justified by the human support constructs of the model of supportive accountability. Overall, face-to-face and online behavior change interventions have their respective advantages and disadvantages and functions, yet both serve important roles. It appears that it is in fact human support that is the most important component in the effectiveness and adherence of both face-to-face and online behavior change interventions, and thoughtfully introducing a digital person-to-person component, to replace face-to-face interactions, can provide the needed human support while diminishing the barriers of in-person meetings. The digital person-to-person component must create accountability, generate opportunities for tailored feedback, and create social support to successfully create health behavior change. As the popularity of the online world grows, and the interest in using the digital environment for health behavior change interventions continues to be embraced, further research into not only the use of online interventions, but the use of a digital person-to-person component, must be explored.
The aim of this study was to investigate whether problematic social networking site (SNS) use (i.e., degree of dependent relationship with SNSs), total SNS time/day, total SNS friends, and specific SNS activities were related to body image (BI), self-esteem (SE), and eating disorder (ED) symptoms/concerns. A sample of young adults (N = 147) completed an online survey which measured SNS usage, problematic SNS use, BI, SE, and ED symptom/concerns. The findings revealed that females and males spent 4.1 ± 3.9 and 2.9 ± 2.8 hr on SNS, respectively, with the majority of time spent lurking (i.e., looking at another users' profile but not actually communicating with them). Furthermore, problematic SNS use was found to be related to BI, SE, and ED symptoms/concerns. Moreover, SNS activities, such as lurking and posting comments on others' profiles, were found to be related to BI, whereas SNS total time was found to be related to ED symptoms/concerns. Overall, this study demonstrates the possible correlational influence of SNSs on BI, SE, and ED symptoms/concerns.
The #fitspo 'tag' is a recent trend on Instagram, which is used on posts to motivate others towards a healthy lifestyle through exercise/eating habits. This study used a mixed-methods approach consisting of text and network analysis via the Netlytic program ( N = 10,000 #fitspo posts), and content analysis of #fitspo images ( N = 122) was used to examine author and image characteristics. Results suggest that #fitspo posts may motivate through appearance-mediated themes, as the largest content categories (based on the associated text) were 'feeling good' and 'appearance'. Furthermore, #fitspo posts may create peer influence/support as personal (opposed to non-personal) accounts were associated with higher popularity of images (i.e. number of likes/followers). Finally, most images contained posed individuals with some degree of objectification.
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