Can Technology Through Smartphones Help Teens Lose Weight?
Technology is a part of our everyday life. What would we do without the use of smartphones today? We rely on them for phone calls, text messages, emails, even vital personal information. Now smartphone users have included ‘health’ as a main feature of their phone applications. Teens are no exception. It’s not uncommon to see 10-year old’s (or even younger) walking around with a cell phone in their hand. Back in the day that was unheard of in our generation. Now teens are playing games, having fun with friends, and even tracking their own personal health right on their smartphone. But does a smartphone really translate into better health for teens and help teens lose weight? Science is saying no.
Can Teens Lose Weight Through Their iPhone?
Let’s think about something for a minute, how many of you know the phone number of your family and friends? Had to actually think about it, right? While smartphones are extremely convenient, there are some drawbacks. With the rise of childhood obesity these days, people are looking at technology to help track their health and fitness. But smartphone technology is a double-edged sword. While it can be beneficial in tracking nutrition and activity levels, it is also creating the effect where people aren’t being active and rather sit around on their phone playing games, texting, or watching YouTube videos. So how can we help teens lose weight?
A group of researchers put technology to the test to see if teens were able to lose weight and maintain it with and then without the use of technology on a smartphone as well as in-person techniques. Researchers conducted a 24-week study (two separate 12-week studies) where they looked at teens, their behavior, and their weight loss. One researcher put it best when he said, “We know that teens are on their phones, which gives us a way to intervene in the moment. We wanted to determine whether we could effectively use texting and a commercially-available smartphone app to help adolescents with weight loss.”
In order to do this, the researchers used the first 12 weeks of the study to work with the teens both through the use of a smartphone (text messaging) as well as in person treatments. The participants were asked to come in for weekly meetings with a clinician and discuss their eating patterns and physical activity each day. They were also sent text messages three times each day to help encourage them to think about their nutrition and activity levels. Each participant was also asked to use a health/fitness app to record their daily exercise as well as log their foods.
By the end of the first 12 weeks, researchers assessed the participants’ results when using the techniques. They found that on average, through the utilization of all the techniques mentioned above, that the teens’ BMI was lowered by just under 1 point (0.08). The results of the first 12-week study raised the question that if the in-person piece of the equation was removed, could technology through the use of the smartphone still allow the teens to continue the program and lose weight or would they eventually give up and go back to their old behaviors?
For the second 12-week session, the researchers removed the in-person meetings and left the teens to simply use the app and daily text messages to help them adhere to improving their nutrition and activity levels on their own. What researchers found during this period is that over three-fourths of the participants stopped using the app (yet text messages were still being sent—but were ignored) and almost all of them gained the weight back that they had lost in the first 12 weeks of the study.
What this suggests is that while smartphones can do many things, human interaction helps adhere to certain programs—in this instance, weight loss and influencing activity levels. When you are no longer accountable to be present for an in-person experience, people are less likely to continue down certain paths. The in-person method was a way to socialize and interact with others in this study. When taken away, the teens lost all aspects of the socialization and interactions they once had and were left to simply follow the plan through the use of the app and text messages alone which failed miserably.
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