How Social Media Can Improve Your Health

When I was eleven years old, I was mad about sticker collecting. As an after-school treat, my mum would take me to a local toy shop called Child and Adult, which had the largest collection of stickers I had ever known a shop to possess. They had glittery stickers, they had stickers adorned with fake gems and they even had little animal stickers with tiny bits of fuzz on them (my personal favourite). I must have bought hundreds and hundreds of stickers during My Year of Sticker Collecting.

But here’s the thing: sticker collecting was not in my genes. I hadn’t come from a long line of sticker traders. What drove my obsession with all things that stuck was that my peer group also collected stickers. And more importantly, compared, showed off and levelled up their social currency through trading stickers.

We would all bring our bright, shiny sticker collection books to school and to each other’s houses and compare our latest purchases. We would trade for hours on end. And I would find such joy in rubbing my fingers over the gentle fuzz of the ever-growing assortment of animal stickers I collected.

When I reminisce about this time in my life, I now recognise it as a classic example of social normative theory. Social normative theory explains how people’s behaviour is influenced by the perceived norms and expectations of the social groups we belong to oridentify with. The theory suggests that we conform to social norms because we want to be accepted and respected by others. Hence: sticker collecting.

We also know that good habits are contagious. Professor Scott Carrell from the University of California, Davis, found that the academic performance of university students is heavily influenced by peers. If you have smarter friends (who presumably have solid study habits), you’ll end up performing better too, through those habits rubbing off on you.

In a world where so much of our exposure to social norms is through social media (the average person spends nearly 2.5 hours per day on the socials), it stands to reason that how we curate our feeds will have a big impact on our behaviours and habits.

Professor Sean Young, the founder and executive director of the University of California Institute for Prediction Technology and the UCLA Center for Digital Behaviour, conducted research to test whether social media influenced health-related behaviour.

In a study involving Stanford undergraduate students, participants were asked to view fifteen G-rated Facebook photos of their peers, which featured minimal ‘sexually suggestive content’ (i.e., no flirting with the camera, revealing clothing, etc.). Compared to a control group not exposed to any images, the G-rated photo viewers believed that more of their peers used condoms and expressed a higher likelihood of using condoms themselves.

This finding highlights the significant influence of social media images on our expectations and related behaviours. Viewing images of people behaving responsibly and modestly can lead us to assume that this is the norm, thus making us more likely to adopt such behaviours ourselves (in this case, increased condom usage).

While social media is often presented as causing harm, we can actually use it as a tool for good – and, specifically, for good health. By strategically curating our social media feed, we can trick our brain into seeing healthy behaviour as the norm, making it easier to change our behaviour.

Put it into action

1. Think about the main area of your health you want to improve, whether this be sleep, movement or nutrition.

2. Reflect on your current social media diet.

   • If nutrition is your focus, do you follow lots of food porn posters? Cake decorating erotica? Dessert debauchery? If you do, try unfollowing them for a few weeks, because I can tell you right now – they are not helping you meet your goals. Not only are these accounts keeping sugariffic food front-of-mind, they are also potentially making you think that this food is normal to consume, and consume regularly. Instead, curate your feed with people who post healthy meals and give you creative tips on cooking with broccoli and Brussels sprouts.

   • If sleep is your goal, unfollow the influencers who party hard into the wee hours of the morning. And if you’re trying to up the movement in your day, get some fitspo in your feed.

   • Re-curating your social media feed will adjust your social norms so that your behaviour naturally becomes more aligned to your overall goal.

Today’s post is an extract from my new book The Health Habit (coming out on January 9, 2024). Pre-order your copy today and email your purchase receipt to preorder@inventium.com.au to get some special goodies including:

• My top 12 favourite wearables, apps and health gadgets that I personally use to improve my health.

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• Personalised Habit Assessment: Early access to the Habit Hijacker assessment, which will help you uncover the biggest blocker to changing your health habits.

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