‘When you think of exercising, you don’t really want to think of puking, tears, and pain’: Young adolescents’ understanding of fitness and #fitspiration

Beth T. Bell; Nova Deighton-Smith; Megan Hurst

doi:10.1177/1359105319869798

‘When you think of exercising, you don’t really want to think of puking, tears, and pain’: Young adolescents’ understanding of fitness and #fitspiration

Beth T. Bell^*, Nova Deighton-Smith, Megan Hurst

^*Corresponding author for this work

Education

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

Adolescents access information about fitness, including content labelled as #fitspiration, through social media. A total of 77 adolescents (mean age = 12.49; standard deviation = 0.55; girls = 27) participated in semi-structured focus groups to explore their perspectives on #fitspiration and fitness more broadly. Through inductive thematic analysis, four themes were developed: (1) fitness enhances physical function and appearance, but these are not always linked; (2) fitness is transformative but requires hard work; (3) fitness should be an intrinsically motivated personal choice; and (4) pain in the pursuit of fitness. Findings highlight young adolescents’ complex understandings of fitness negotiated through their critical interpretation of #fitspiration.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	1046-1060
Number of pages	15
Journal	Journal of Health Psychology
Volume	26
Issue number	7
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1177/1359105319869798
Publication status	Published - 12 Aug 2019

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2019.

Keywords

adolescence
exercise
physical activity
qualitative methods
social media

Access to Document

10.1177/1359105319869798

https://ray.yorksj.ac.uk/id/eprint/3982/3/Focus%20Group%20Final%20V2.pdf

Cite this

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title = "{\textquoteleft}When you think of exercising, you don{\textquoteright}t really want to think of puking, tears, and pain{\textquoteright}: Young adolescents{\textquoteright} understanding of fitness and #fitspiration",

abstract = "Adolescents access information about fitness, including content labelled as #fitspiration, through social media. A total of 77 adolescents (mean age = 12.49; standard deviation = 0.55; girls = 27) participated in semi-structured focus groups to explore their perspectives on #fitspiration and fitness more broadly. Through inductive thematic analysis, four themes were developed: (1) fitness enhances physical function and appearance, but these are not always linked; (2) fitness is transformative but requires hard work; (3) fitness should be an intrinsically motivated personal choice; and (4) pain in the pursuit of fitness. Findings highlight young adolescents{\textquoteright} complex understandings of fitness negotiated through their critical interpretation of #fitspiration.",

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‘When you think of exercising, you don’t really want to think of puking, tears, and pain’: Young adolescents’ understanding of fitness and #fitspiration

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

Access to Document

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Cite this