As the countdown to midnight happened this New Year’s Eve, did you make a resolution to get healthier? Maybe you also resolved to try and get your kids more physically active and eat their vegetables?
But with kids spending an average of 7 hours starting at screens, how can you get their attention to get off the couch and come join you in your new year’s resolution to get fit? Instead of fighting technology, researchers at the U of SC are working on ways to use technology to get both parents and children active.
Selecting the Right Technology to Help Your Family Get Fit
While there are many tools available help support families in their efforts to live healthy lives, mobile technologies (e.g., mobile apps and wearable physical activity monitors) have been growing in popularity over the past few years. A recent count of health and fitness apps revealed that there are over 23,000 in the iTunes store and nearly 18,000 in the Android store. Additionally, physical activity monitors (e.g., Fitbit, Vivofit) have become much more common, and are now sold in many major retail stores.
With all of the available technologies, it can be overwhelming to select the options that might work best for your family. However, by taking additional steps and involving yourself with some extra screening, you can find apps and/or devices that will best meet and assist with your family’s specific needs.
Here are some of the common categories of apps and devices:
- Physical Activity Devices: Often worn on the wrist or waist, these devices measure your physical activity through their daily step count. They can sync to an app on your smartphone or tablet to help you keep a record of your steps over time.
- Recipe Apps: Help you find recipes and shopping lists to prepare meals with more fruits and vegetables.
- Tracking Apps: Log your food intake and physical activity to track your progress and weight over time; usually include graphs and other visuals to help you see your change.
- Educational Apps for Children: Apps designed for children to help them learn more about healthy eating and physical activity through games and other activities.
- Family Apps: Apps designed for parents and children to use together, to support both of them in their health changes. There are only a handful of these apps available currently.
In 2013, a team of researchers at the U of SC published a review of apps for iPhone and iPad, where they looked at whether the apps were using strategies for behavior change that past research has shown are effective. The full paper is available here, including a list of the apps reviewed and their scores.
Benefits of Using Apps
One of the largest benefits of using these technologies is that they make use of something that most people are already deeply connected with — their smartphone or tablet. Anything that you can do you more easily integrate healthy changes into your existing routines and tools will make it easier to maintain long term.
In addition, health technologies offer an opportunity to make health behavior physical activity through their daily step count. They can sync to an app on your smartphone or tablet to help you keep a record of your steps over time.
Help is Available to Select the Right Tools For Your Family!
Wading through all of these available technologies can be challenging, but there are people available to help!
The research team at the U of SC is looking into the available apps and physical activity devices to figure out what really helps families in the real world. They have evaluated the products that the average family can purchase, and are in the processing of testing the best of those apps to see what families think about them when they try to support their family in healthy eating and physical activity. If you have a child between 9-12 years old, considering signing up for more information on the upcoming study (beginning late-January during which families will use technology to help them reach healthy eating and physical activity goals).
So what are you waiting for? If one of your New Year’s resolutions is for you and your kids to become more healthy and fit, take advantage of the technology offered and let the U of SC help you find which app will work best for you.
To read more about the opportunities to participate in current research studies on healthy eating and technology use, visit the USC Weight Research Center.
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Danielle Schoffman is a fourth year doctoral student in Health Promotion, Education, and Behavior in the Arnold School of Public Health at the University of South Carolina. A native of the San Francisco Bay area, Danielle moved to Columbia for graduate school and she is enjoying living in Columbia and experiencing all that the South has to offer — the famously hot weather, new foods, and to close access to the riverways, mountains, and beaches!
