Did Social Media Make Fitness Harder?

More free fitness instruction exists right now than at any point in history. You can watch a qualified coach teach a squat at 2 a.m. for nothing. And the share of American adults who strength train twice a week has barely moved. In 1997, about one in five met the guideline. By 2018, it was about 27%. So where did all that content go? This episode follows the incentives. A creator has to post something new every day to stay in the feed. A body getting stronger needs roughly the same few things, week after week, for months. When those two clocks run side by side, the advice changes faster than anyone can follow it. One Australian study of 300 healthy-lifestyle videos found most of the information misleading, and the creators with no relevant qualifications got it right less than one time in twenty. A study of news on Twitter turned up something less comfortable. When researchers took the bots out, false stories still spread faster than true ones. People did that part. Then the gym floor: what happens when someone follows a downloaded program through shoulder pain because the app says four sets, and what researchers saw when women looked at fitspiration images and then got on a treadmill. There's also a lightning round through the trends in a real feed this week: Hyrox, creatine, 75 Hard, cold plunges, and anything ending in "maxxing." Signal or noise? It ends with a number short enough to fit on an index card. Links & Notes "Eat Like Me = Look Like Me": A Content Analysis of Healthy Lifestyle, Nutrition and Clean Eating Social Media Content(Porteous, Kemps, Powell & Prichard, Journal of Technology in Behavioral Science, 2026). The Australian study of 300 TikTok and Instagram videos: 68% of the information was misleading or deceptive. The Spread of True and False News Online (Vosoughi, Roy & Aral, Science, 2018). The MIT study: false news was 70% more likely to be retweeted, and the gap held with bots removed. The Effect of Instagram #Fitspiration Images on Young Women's Mood, Body Image, and Exercise Behaviour(Prichard et al., Body Image, 2020). The treadmill study. Trends in Adherence to the Muscle-Strengthening Activity Guidelines in the US Over a 20-Year Span(Calatayud et al., General Hospital Psychiatry, 2023). 19.8% in 1997, 27.2% in 2018. Trends in Muscle-Strengthening Exercise Among Nationally Representative Samples of United States Adults Between 2011 and 2017(Bennie et al., Journal of Physical Activity and Health, 2020). 29.1% to 30.3% over six years, in a sample of 1.7 million adults. Episode 39: Stress, Cortisol, and Your Gains. For anyone eyeing a cortisol cocktail. Episode 22: Stop Collecting Sore Joints and Start Making Progress: Programming 101. For when you're picking the one program you'll stick with. Episode 7: Trainer Red Flags, Green Flags, and Real Talk. More on sorting out who knows what they're talking about. Work with Srdjan and the team at ELEV8 Fitness in Portland, Oregon. Submit your questions to the show!