Social media competition pushes people to exercise more

Competing on social media may increase people's fitness dramatically, according to a new study which also found that support from friends could make one less likely to go to the gym.
For the study, researchers recruited about 800 students for an 11-week exercise programme.
The fitness initiative included weekly exercise classes, fitness mentoring and nutrition advice, all managed through a website built by the researchers.
After programme completion, the students who attended the most exercise classes for activities like running, spinning, yoga and weight lifting, among others, won prizes.
"We found that social media can increase people's fitness dramatically," said Damon Centola, associate professor from University of Pennsylvania in the US.

Participants did not know that the researchers had split them into four groups to test how different kinds of social networks affected their exercise levels.

The four groups were - individual competition, team support, team competition and a control group.
In the individual group, participants could see exercise leaderboards listing anonymous programme members and earned prizes based on their own success attending classes.
For each team group, participants were assigned to a unit. In the team support group, they could chat online and encourage team members to exercise, with rewards going to the most successful teams with the most class attendance.

In addition, those in the team competition group could see a leaderboard of other teams and their team standing.
Participants in the control group could use the website and go to any class, but were not given any social connections on the website; prizes in this group were based on individual success taking classes.
Competition motivated participants to exercise the most, with attendance rates 90 per cent higher in the competitive groups than in the control group.
Both team and individual competition equally drove the students to work out, with participants in the former taking a mean of 38.5 classes a week and those in the latter taking 35.7. Members of the control group went to the gym far less often, on average 20.3 times a week.

The biggest surprise came in the number of workouts a week by members of the team support group - just 16.8, on average - half the exercise rate of the competitive groups.
"Framing the social interaction as a competition can create positive social norms for exercising," said Jingwen Zhang, a former graduate at University of Pennsylvania.
"Social support can make people more dependent on receiving messages, which can change the focus of the program," said Zhang, now an assistant professor at the University of California, Davis in the US.
The study was published in the journal Preventative Medicine Reports.