Digital Inequalities in the Use of Self-Tracking Diet and Fitness Apps: Interview Study on the Influence of Social, Economic, and Cultural Factors

in JMIR mHealth and uHealth (2018), 6(4), 1-13

Background: Digital devices are driving economic and social transformations, but assessing the uses, perceptions, and impact of these new technologies on diet and physical activity remains a major ... [more ▼]

Background: Digital devices are driving economic and social transformations, but assessing the uses, perceptions, and impact of these new technologies on diet and physical activity remains a major societal challenge. Objective: We aimed to determine under which social, economic, and cultural conditions individuals in France were more likely to be actively invested in the use of self-tracking diet and fitness apps for better health behaviors. Methods: Existing users of 3 diet and fitness self-tracking apps (Weight Watchers, MyFitnessPal, and sport apps) were recruited from 3 regions of France. We interviewed 79 individuals (Weight Watchers, n=37; MyFitnessPal, n=20; sport apps, n=22). In-depth semistructured interviews were conducted with each participant, using open-ended questions about their use of diet and fitness apps. A triangulation of methods (content, textual, and quantitative analyses) was performed. Results: We found 3 clusters of interviewees who differed by social background and curative goal linked to use under constraint versus preventive goal linked to chosen use, and intensity of their self-quantification efforts and participation in social networks. Interviewees used the apps for a diversity of uses, including measurement, tracking, quantification, and participation in digital communities. A digital divide was highlighted, comprising a major social gap. Social conditions for appropriation of self-tracking devices included sociodemographic factors, life course stages, and cross-cutting factors of heterogeneity. Conclusions: Individuals from affluent or intermediate social milieus were most likely to use the apps and to participate in the associated online social networks. These interviewees also demonstrated a preventive approach to a healthy lifestyle. Individuals from lower milieus were more reluctant to use digital devices relating to diet and physical activity or to participate in self-quantification. The results of the study have major implications for public health: the digital self-quantification device is intrinsically less important than the way the individual uses it, in terms of adoption of successful health behaviors. [less ▲]

Do Public Health Campaigns Have an Impact on Diet? Institutional Set-Up and Everyday Appropriations of Nutritional Recommendations in France and Luxembourg

Scientific Conference (2017, June 22)

Since the early 2000s nutrition has increasingly established itself in various European countries as a major element of public health policies. The launching at governmental level of the Programme ... [more ▼]

Since the early 2000s nutrition has increasingly established itself in various European countries as a major element of public health policies. The launching at governmental level of the Programme National Nutrition Santé in France in 2001, and of the National Action Plan “Gesond iessen, méi bewegen” in Luxembourg in 2006 has generated a number of public health campaigns and the dissemination of a series of nutritional recommendations. However, while these policies were developed concomitantly in numerous European countries, the work on their institutional implementation, but also the appropriation of nutritional recommendations by individuals, has rarely been put in European comparison, even less so in the field of social sciences and sociology. Based on a mixed-methodology combining an institutional analysis of how national models and on two field surveys with in-depth interviews, this contribution will examine the political implementation and societal appropriation of nutritional recommendations in two European countries, France and Luxembourg. Based on this comparison, the paper explores the following research question: in which way – and by which social categories – are the recommendations taken in and put into practice, and if so, which appropriation processes and interpretations occur? Do the social, societal and cultural differences between Luxembourg and France (as well as within them), in terms of standard of living, cultural values and dissemination of norms, account for differentiated appropriations of dietary incentives? Which socio-cultural factors and everyday constraints favour a frontal internalisation of dietary recommendations, as opposed to a more creative appropriation or even a critical avoidance? By means of the recommendations issued in the framework of public health, we pose the more general question of how and why dietary norms are perceived and integrated by individuals. This contribution will highlight that, in France as in Luxembourg, these two nutritional policies show striking similarities in term of contents, but marked differences in their structuring and their implementation. The dissemination of recommendations is based on policies, which are received, understood and appropriated in different ways. The comparison France / Luxembourg shows that socio-cultural logics override national ones: the way in which the individuals perceive the recommendations and appropriate them reflect more the social affiliation than the national one; gender and the events of the life cycle, particularly parentality, are also relevant. The recommendations disseminated by France's PNNS and Luxembourg's GIMB primarily reach people whose dietary habits are already orientated in the ‘desired’ direction. But even those persons sort out between the information that strikes them as being more or less pertinent – they only ever appropriate a selection of the recommendations. Ultimately, it is on the basis of their priorities and personal constraints, on the one hand, as well as of the agreement between the political recommendations with the previous societal practices and values on the other, that credit is given to this or that message. In the same way, the recommendations are only appropriated (albeit, again, in a selective and pragmatic way) if they match people’s daily priorities and constraints, as well as the general cultural values of their social milieu. No matter how much cognitive effort is put into nutritional composition in everyday experience, interviewees compensate it by a personal focus on the hedonistic communicative value and community formation through eating – which always comes first in their mind. Finally, the comparison of two European countries’ political institutionalisation on the one hand, and the appropriation and the putting into practice of nutritional recommendations on the other, allows us to comprehend more general societal evolutions: namely, a globalisation of national policies and of food cultures and a differentiation of social contrasts, cutting across national frontiers – but which take on specific forms depending on the standard of living and the social structure of the societies under review. The findings revealed by this comparison between France and Luxembourg can without doubt be further extended and point to the challenges that all European societies face in the future in a context of mounting health inequalities. [less ▲]