Promotion of Healthy Lifestyles to Teenagers with Mobile Devices: A Case Study in Portugal

Abstract

Educating teenagers about nutrition and promoting active lifestyles is essential in reducing the long-term health risks and one idea to achieve this is by using mobile applications. Previous studies showed that the existing mobile applications have similar functionalities, such as intervention with questionnaires, and the use of gamification techniques to improve interactiveness. However, unlike our study, some studies are not validated and verified by healthcare professionals. Additionally, this study intends to promote the interaction between the teenagers and the medical communities. In this study, we analyze the benefits of the proposed mobile application, which features monitoring of physical activity, daily tips and curiosities, questionnaires, and gamification through earning points. Most of the teenagers were satisfied with the physical activity monitoring and found the tips, curiosities, and weekly questionnaires useful. The study started with 26 teenagers from two schools in the center of Portugal that would use the mobile application for five weeks. Still, at the end of the study, only 7 teenagers finalized the study. The decreasing number of teenagers in the study was affected by the lack of social interaction caused by the pandemic situation. During the period, the mobile application would engage the users with notifications on nutrition and physical activity, challenges concerning the number of steps and calories they would have to spend, and questionnaires related to the curiosities and suggestions from the previous week. We used Fisher’s test to investigate the relationship between the assessment obtained in the responses to the questionnaires, and the adoption of healthier eating and sports practices. In summary, participants were satisfied with the mobile application and experienced some improvements in diet and habits.

The Effects of mHealth-Based Gamification Interventions on Participation in Physical Activity: Systematic Review

“…However, for the single-group studies, most of the studies (6/8, 75%) [ 30 , 44 , 49 , 59 , 62 , 72 ] demonstrated that the time spent in PA significantly increased after the gamification intervention. Only the study by Villasana et al [ 69 ] reported no trend toward improvement; the pre–post difference was not significant after the gamification intervention, and the study used just 1 game element (challenge) and did not use any theory ( Multimedia Appendix 4 ).…”

Design and Analysis of Adolescent Physical Health Monitoring System under the Background of Internet of Things and 5G

“…To this end, we analyzed the advantages of the application and the recognition of teenagers and then found the obstacles encountered by some teenagers in the process of using it through sample survey, as well as the relationship between the evaluation obtained by using the Fisher test to answer the questionnaire and adopting a healthier diet and exercise practice. Finally, I learned that mobile applications are popular, and, to some extent, their daily eating habits have improved [ 5 ]. Smart wearable devices have become popular in people's lives and play an active role in monitoring adolescents' health.…”

Psychosocial Impacts of Mobile Game on K12 Students and Trend Exploration for Future Educational Mobile Games

“…"Angry Birds", developed by Rovio and launched in 2009, is another phenomenal product. Throughout the game, gamers only need to do one action, which is to press and hold the bird on the slingshot in the screen to drag and release (Villasana et al, 2020). Such a simple operation overturned the public's inherent impression of how mobile games are presented, so Fruit Ninja and Cut the Rope, launched a year later, both became star products at the time for their sophisticated gameplay design and simple sliding operation (Thomas et al, 2019).…”

“…This is the dream of our educational researchers, and Dewey's emphasis on "learning by doing" does not seem to be working particularly well. In contrast, in a virtual environment we can learn by doing, which is similar to the real thing, improving students' problem-solving skills, creativity and other higher-order skills, and helping to develop emotional and attitudinal values (Villasana et al, 2020). This is why educational scholars are proposing to implement gamified learning, using educational games to achieve gamified learning.…”