Navigating ambivalence: A qualitative study of young fitness self-trackers' engagement with body ideals through social media.

This article examines the role of social media in shaping body ideals among young Danish fitness self-trackers aged 15–24, based on 20 qualitative interviews. It finds that social media serve primarily as resources for practical knowledge, motivation, and visual goals rather than for personal sharing or interaction, and are experienced as both indispensable and ambivalent environments that require active content curation to navigate misinformation and demotivating imagery. Participants position themselves as mature, rational users who manage social media's dual potential to inspire and discourage by selectively engaging with content, highlighting that self-tracking involves not only quantitative measurement but also imaginative and affective work within a complex social media ecology. The study contributes to body image and self-tracking research by emphasizing the nuanced, agentic ways young fitness exercisers interact with social media, challenging simplistic causal assumptions about media influence on body ideals.