In a world where social media influencers try to persuade people to become their latest followers, fitness influencers present a convincing bargain. They promise to help you feel and look your best, but their content often comes with a price. Here are seven reasons why fitness influencers can be damaging to your wellbeing if you don’t know what to look for before hitting that follow button:
1. They Don’t Know Your Exercise Needs
Influencers in any industry should post content that appeals to a mass audience. Although that can introduce you to helpful products and services, you’ll also get exercise recommendations for people without physical disabilities, chronic health conditions or even your body type.
The Pilates instructor walking their followers through intense 15-minute workouts will encourage viewers to push through their movements. This limited content can mislead followers with conditions like arthritis who can’t do the exercises without severe pain. If that person pushes through to reap the promised physical benefits, they could injure themselves.
2. They Create Unrealistic Physical Stamina Expectations
Imagine following a yoga instructor who has a six-pack. You could follow their yoga routines daily and still not achieve their toned physique. That’s because fitness influencers work out outside their recorded content. They aren’t only doing the limited, branded exercises because they have to sell a visually outstanding lifestyle.
Not achieving the same physical stamina or look could damage your self-image. Negative self-talk that’s critical of your capabilities prevents you from remembering you can benefit from any exercise and thrive in any body type.
3. They Profit From Facilitating Body Dysmorphia
Fitness influencers post pictures, captions and videos that promote an ideal body type. It profits from traditional body insecurities but is especially harmful and profitable when the posts hook individuals with body dysmorphia.
Body dysmorphia is a mental health condition that drives people to extremely negative thoughts and actions regarding those thoughts. They might participate in self-harm activities, instinctive habits to avoid looking at themselves or actions to change their bodies. Extreme workout routines and harmful products sold by fitness influencers can seem like long-term solutions to people with body dysmorphia.
Seeing perfectly toned fitness influencers on your feed daily can create discomfort in your body, making you lean harder into the influencer’s works and products. As more people deal with varying intensities of body dysmorphia, the influencers stand to gain views, ad money and product sales.
4. They Might Sell Unhealthy Fitness Products
Most companies have to abide by laws that require approval from their respective national regulatory agencies or authorities and as influencers aren’t corporations, they can sell products or supplements without regulatory review or peer-reviewed studies.
They might also sign sponsored partnership deals to promote products like detox teas. These teas can have harmful health effects like acute severe hyponatremia, dehydration and diarrhea. Similar products might seem like healthy supplemental dietary additions to anyone following an influencer’s workout routines, but they don’t have to have regulatory approval so you can’t guarantee their safety.
5. They Aren’t There to Watch Your Form
Virtual instructors can’t monitor your physical form during workouts. You could follow along with movements like deadlifts and hurt your back by unknowingly applying pressure to the wrong parts of your spine.
An in-person instructor knows how to maximise the health benefits of your workout by guiding you through posture checks. Even something as simple as stretching could improve your range of motion and decrease pain if you correctly mirror your instructor’s form. Otherwise, the movements could create long-lasting pain and potentially require medical care.
6. They Might Perpetuate Harmful Stereotypes
Even the most well-meaning fitness influencers repeat triggering phrases during their videos. They might try to motivate viewers by reminding them how they want to lose weight or become better versions of themselves, but that only perpetuates the low self-esteem that drives people to greater anxiety and depression.
7. They Want Your Clicks
A helpful fitness instructor would encourage you to reach sustainable, realistic goals. Whether they worked with you in person or virtually, they’d know you as an individual. Setting those goals would be easy, but fitness influencers aren’t making a living doing the same thing.
Instead, online fitness gurus make money primarily through clicks. They’ll put harmful stereotypes and buzzwords into their video titles like “Five Moves to Instantly Lose Weight.” There’s nothing instant or simple about reaching physical health goals, but the phrasing makes people click on the video anyway.
Each view results in cash for the person who created the video. Their titles aren’t the only way they earn money for clicks and ad views. They also make thumbnails with images of their edited or professionally toned bodies to make viewers watch out of instinctive envy.
Traditional instructors make a living after getting a physical training education. Clients pay them according to payment plans, not through low-paying click rates that encourage influencers to post more harmful content. They capitalise on your discomfort, envy and preconceived negative beliefs about your body. Professional instructors don’t need that to make a living, so they’re much more effective at helping their clients.
Be Wary Around Fitness Influencers
There are numerous reasons why people decide to work with fitness professionals. While you may be interested in improving your physical fitness, following influencers in that industry might not be the best thing for your wellbeing. Watch for these effects to determine if it’s time to unfollow some accounts and make your feed more uplifting.
