What Minnesota researchers found after studying Strava’s effects on mental health

For millions of people, using the Strava fitness-tracking app is as much a part of an exercise routine as a decent water bottle or the correct shoes. Strava goes where you go.

That might not always be a good thing.

With more than 125 million registered users — mainly runners, cyclists and hikers — Strava combines health tracking with social media by encouraging a community of followers. But sports psychology and social media researchers at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter wondered whether the fitness positives outweigh the potential mental health negatives.

In two studies, the researchers found that Strava users recognize the app’s ability to motivate them into action and connect them to other exercisers. But they said the app’s use brings on anxiety about their performance after the fact. A third study, which will be presented this week, supports the findings.

“There is lots of data on fitness trackers. There is lots of data on social media. But Strava marries the two and is really unique,” said sports psychology professor Hayley Russell, one of the researchers. “You are potentially very vulnerably sharing your fitness online with others, who also are sharing their fitness online.”

Strava, based in San Francisco, did not reply to an email from the Minnesota Star Tribune seeking comment.

Russell said the study of Strava’s psychosocial consequences — the influence of its social elements on how its user thinks or feels — was almost nonexistent when the school began its research in spring 2021. The general perception is that fitness trackers are positive, motivating tools.

Russell said she thought the framing was incomplete.

“There really wasn’t much on, ‘Yep, it can do those things, but also how does it make you feel when you do those things?’” she said. “I do think there are many positives of using Strava, but have you balanced that with the potential negatives of using Strava just like any other fitness tracker?”

Russell and colleagues, including Charlie Potts, who studies social media, identified that their targets for analysis were easy to find and were ideal subjects: students who run and, as college students, are frequent social media users at a key point in their identity development.

In their first study, published in Recreational Sports Journal, researchers found that their group of 18 students in running clubs on U.S. campuses recognized that positives and negatives are the reality of Strava use. Some participants said the app promoted community and healthy competition. Others said they were aware its use brought on insecurities as they decided how to present their workouts to followers or when they got into comparisons.

The findings led Russell and her colleagues to study a second group in 2023, this time professional and semipro runners. There were overlaps with the first study’s findings, but researchers found the elite runners thought more critically about their Strava use, perhaps owing to their ages and running experiences.

“A lot of participants saw it as transactional. They wanted to know what their competition was doing,” Russell said. “So they felt like they had to share what they were doing as well.”

Like the recreational runners, they were concerned with how others viewed them, but they did more to control how they were viewed. For example, Russell said, they would hide data they thought was undesirable, such as an elevated heart rate on a “slow” run. Or qualify what they saw as “bad” runs by naming their activity or commenting on their run to indicate they weren’t feeling well or were running with someone else — implying their partner was a slower runner.

While recruiting for their first study, Russell said some people wanted to talk about their hate for Strava or had strong feelings about the app. While that feedback disqualified them, Gustavus pursued that group in a third study to help get a broader perspective of how people feel. Lead researchers Ellen Becken and Lucie Henrich, both students, have turned to the social media platform Reddit, where people comment anonymously.

“We were fascinated at the variety of outcomes, both positive and negative, users felt when using Strava,” Becken said.

Comments run the gamut from humorous to angry. Most remarks are targeted at others’ Strava use, Russell said. There are gripes about people who pause their watches to get their times to appear better, or users who cheat to land on a leaderboard or acquire achievement badges.

She said one quote summed up how important Strava is to people talking about it on Reddit: “Thanks Strava. Not like I needed another source of anxiety or anything.”

“There are some pretty transparent feelings about how involved people are with Strava, about how much they think about Strava,” Russell said. “And again, this is a self-selecting population who is posting about Strava on Reddit, so they are obviously committed to Strava.”

Becken and Heinrich will present their findings this week at the annual conference of the Association of Applied Sports Psychology in Las Vegas.

While there are millions on Strava, users are regarded as a niche group in the world of psychology and kinesiology research that Russell travels in. And that has created a buzz about the research at Gustavus. “This is by far the most enthusiastic people have been about my research,” she said.

Russell said, in general, researchers were not surprised that runners had positive and negative perceptions of Strava use, knowing all the discourse on the effects of social media.

“When we think about conclusions or implications, it is very much about people reflecting on what value is [Strava use] adding to your life,” Russell said. “Is the value outweighing any negative it is doing in your life or in your experience as a runner, cyclist or exerciser?”