Social media as a source of nutrition information for athletes

Abstract

Background Social media contains a wealth of nutrition information and proposes a costeffective and highly engaging platform to deliver nutrition and dietary information to athletes. To be effective, nutrition interventions must understand the needs and behaviours of their target population. However, little is known about whether athletes use social media as a source of nutrition information. Objectives: To determine whether athletes are using social media as a source of nutrition information, the characteristics of social media site accessed and to understand athletes’ perceptions of social media as a nutrition resource. Design: Descriptive, cross-sectional self-administered online questionnaire. Participants: 306 New Zealand athletes (87 Elite, 219 Recreational). Main outcome measures: Proportion of athletes who have used social media for nutrition purposes in the last 12 months and the characteristics of social media platforms accessed. Perceived advantages and concerns of social media use for nutrition information in athletes. Results: Of the 219 Recreational and 87 Elite athletes who completed the questionnaire 100% had used social media in the last 12 months and 65% had used social media for nutrition purposes. Using regression analysis, after adjusting for age, ethnicity, education and competitive status, female athletes were significantly more likely to have used social media for nutrition purposes (OR = 2.7, 95% CI: 1.52–4.62, p = 0.001). Elite athletes were less likely to have used social media for nutrition (OR = 0.44, 95% CI: 0.24–0.83, p = 0.011) adjusted for gender, age, ethnicity and education. Athletes commonly used social media for practical nutrition purposes, including recipes (80%) and information about restaurants and cafes (62%). Inductive analysis revealed four main advantages of social media as a nutrition resource: ease of access, well presented information, personal connectedness and information richness. Athletes primary concern for obtaining nutrition information from social media was information unreliability (84%). Conclusion: With information reliability frequently identified as a barrier for social media use, there is a need for credible nutrition information to be made more available to athletes. This study has identified a number of strategies for nutrition and dietetic practitioners to apply to effectively engage athletes via social media platforms.