Question: How could you use social media to encourage inactive adults to become active?

Katie Pickering answered on 10 Nov 2014:

Great question!
Social media is an excellent way of spreading messages quickly and globally! Social media is being used in a few differnt ways at the moment to encourage people to become more active. For instance on Facebook there are loads of links to pages about sports and activities, information on how to perform certain exercises. There has been a lot of interest in the 30 Day challenges that are basically a 30 day exercise program and people build up their exerice each day based follwoing the guidance that was posted on social media. The beauty of this approach is that if you feel self conscious about joining a gym you can still do the exercises and see how to do them properly and perform them in the comfort of your own home!
Twitter is also a great tool for spreading healthy messages about the importance of being active. This is one of the biggest barriers to people taking part – not knowing enough about the importance of activity or how to do certain exercises. With social media the ability to upload videos means its easier to be able to learn how to do certain exercises now as well.
We also use social media as a support network which is a really important part of trying to become more active and healthier. We need people to encourage us and support us through it as it can be really difficult at times. Again Facebook has support group pages for those taking part in specific exercise programs.For example I am researching the Couch to 5K running apps and there are loads of facebook pages where people using the apps talk to each other, ask advice, tell each other well done. its great.