Sport and fitness app uses: a review of humanities and social science perspectives

Abstract

Sport and fitness mobile applications (SFMAs) have led to significant changes in how people engage in sport and physical activity. This development is part of a broader trend of self-tracking (the ‘quantified self’) and gamification, whose effects are discussed in an increasing number of publications in the humanities and social sciences. The aim of this interdisciplinary literature review is to provide an overview of the main research results on these apps. It summarises their emergence and the discourse of those who promote them, the factors leading to their adoption, their uses in practice, the reasons for their abandonment or rejection, and the risks and perverse effects linked to their use. The main sociological, psychological and philosophical interpretations of the phenomenon are also outlined: mobile applications as a tool for behaviour change, the agentive capacities of these sociotechnical systems, and the contemporary imperative of self-management. Some users find real support in SFMAs to set goals, plan their sessions, and/or to make physical activity a regular routine. However, for others, their use becomes excessive, leading to frustration or changes in social behaviour. Many studies point out the difficulty of engaging athletes in the use of SFMAs in a lasting way. While instances of long-term and balanced use are not uncommon, they coexist with use that borders on obsession, or even forms of dependence. We conclude with current research priorities and highlight avenues of research that merit further study.

Keywords:

• Interdisciplinarity
• literature review
• mobile applications
• sport
• uses

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 According to a large-scale international survey, 33% of internet users over 15 currently monitor or track their health or fitness via an online or mobile application, or with a fitness band, clip or smartwatch. An additional 18% have done so in the past, but stopped (GFK, 2016). In < xref > Litman et al.’s (2015) survey of a physically active population of 726 people aged 18 to 74, 20% declared using a SFMA, and 16% stated they have done so in the past but stopped, with 64% saying they have never used such a device.

2 Cairn.info gathers 150 French-speaking editors, including 58 for scientific journals only (n = 531) in 15 disciplinary fields within the field of HSS. It partnered with revues.org (which became OpenEdition) in the early 2000s. The second most important francophone platform (persee.fr) has not been consulted, since it focuses on retrospective references, thus excluding the most recent research.

3 French catalog by libraries and documentation centers for higher education and research, the SUDOC system includes more than 13 million bibliographic records (books, PhD dissertations, journal articles, electronic resources, etc.).

4 According to Gusenbauer (2019), the total number of references in Google Scholar amounts to about 390 million entries; this is currently the most comprehensive scientific search engine. It interacts with the SUDOC system and the WorldCat international catalog.

5 According to this company, more than 118 million publications were available on the ResearchGate website in 2019. Its search engine allows simultaneous searches in the network’s internal resources as well as in bibliographic databases such as PubMed, CiteSeer, etc.

6 This ambiguous notion expresses the capacity to satisfy one’s needs, and solution one's problems in an autonomous way (Dujarier, 2008). Such terms as responsibility and skills development are attached to it.

7 The postmodern and post-structuralist thought, deeply inspired by French thinkers in some North-American campus, especially Foucault, Deleuze, Derrida, Baudrillard, and Lyotard.