Navigating ambivalence: A qualitative study of young fitness self-trackers’ engagement with body ideals through social media

TY - JOUR

T1 - Navigating ambivalence

T2 - A qualitative study of young fitness self-trackers’ engagement with body ideals through social media

AU - Stage, Carsten

AU - Nielsen, Stinne Bach

PY - 2024/7

Y1 - 2024/7

N2 - This article explores how social media are involved in imagining and sensing body ideals among young fitness self-trackers in Denmark (age 15–24). The analysis is based on 20 interviews and contributes to existing research on social media, body image and self-tracking by showing that social media are central for the fitness practices of the participants, but also that gaining access to practical knowledge, motivational material and visual goals seem to be more important motivations for social media use than personal sharing and interaction. Social media are furthermore understood by the participants as unavoidable, but ambivalent terrains in the sense that cognitive and affective benefits, like knowledge or motivation, can only be accessed and felt by handling the risk of also encountering misinformation and demotivating images of idealised or deceptive bodies. The informants legitimise their engagement with social media by positioning themselves as mature media users able to navigate social media through practices of content dis/engagement. The ambivalence of social media is in other words experienced as both ‘elemental’ and ‘curatable’ by the informants; an experience that stresses the need to question the traditional conceptualisation of ambivalence as an inhibition of personal agency and will formation.

AB - This article explores how social media are involved in imagining and sensing body ideals among young fitness self-trackers in Denmark (age 15–24). The analysis is based on 20 interviews and contributes to existing research on social media, body image and self-tracking by showing that social media are central for the fitness practices of the participants, but also that gaining access to practical knowledge, motivational material and visual goals seem to be more important motivations for social media use than personal sharing and interaction. Social media are furthermore understood by the participants as unavoidable, but ambivalent terrains in the sense that cognitive and affective benefits, like knowledge or motivation, can only be accessed and felt by handling the risk of also encountering misinformation and demotivating images of idealised or deceptive bodies. The informants legitimise their engagement with social media by positioning themselves as mature media users able to navigate social media through practices of content dis/engagement. The ambivalence of social media is in other words experienced as both ‘elemental’ and ‘curatable’ by the informants; an experience that stresses the need to question the traditional conceptualisation of ambivalence as an inhibition of personal agency and will formation.

KW - Ambivalence

KW - body ideal

KW - body image

KW - fitness

KW - self-tracking

KW - social media

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85161697891&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1177/13634593231175277

DO - 10.1177/13634593231175277

M3 - Journal article

C2 - 37191089

SN - 1363-4593

VL - 28

SP - 633

EP - 650

JO - Health

JF - Health

IS - 4

ER -