Keeping fit & staying safe: A systematic review of women’s use of social media for fitness

Social media has transformed how users create, share, and consume health and fitness content. Research to date demonstrates that despite positive sharing opportunities, women are subject to misinformation, gendered harassment, and economic surveillance. To clarify the benefits and challenges facing women who interact with fitness content on social media, we conducted a qualitative systematic synthesis of 21 research papers. Thematic synthesis of the included papers describes how social media is used as a site to share information and experiences, how women engage with fitness content and how platforms are used in this engagement. We constructed four themes describing women’s actions in engaging with fitness content online: producing, observing, interacting, and managing. In one of the main contributions of this paper, these themes are worked into a modes of engagement framework, for categorising and understanding the ways women use social media for fitness. This framework may be useful in further analysis of women’s use of social media.