The longitudinal effects of social sharing on physical health

A key strategy to combat sedentary lifestyle is to encourage fitness exercises. Traditional wellness and lifestyle management programs focus on inducing health awareness and providing fitness activity support. The growing pervasive use of smartphones allows individualized and cost-effective digital wellness programs to be administrated through mobile fitness apps. Drawing on the self-promotion literature, this paper elucidates the effects of mobile fitness app on health outcomes. Specifically, this study examines a social feature of mobile fitness app usage - social sharing. The results of our longitudinal field experiment reveal strong evidence that mobile fitness apps help improve health outcomes. Furthermore, compared the absence of social sharing, social sharing leads to lower body fatness, however the effects of social sharing diminish over time.