At the Centre for Sport, Physical Activity and Health Equality (SPHERE), we explore how digital technologies shape experiences of sport, physical activity, and health across the life course.
While our research spans all ages, recent projects have revealed the particular impact of digital cultures on young people, especially in relation to identity, wellbeing, and inclusion.
These projects are part of SPHERE’s broader commitment to tackling inequality and promoting social inclusion in sport, physical activity, and health. They share a collective focus on how digital environments are not neutral spaces, but ones shaped by power, commercial interests, and social inequalities.
From betting apps embedded in sports media to wearable tech and health platforms targeting youth, digital tools increasingly mediate how young people engage with their bodies, identities, and communities. These digital spaces are increasingly shaped by power, commercial interests, and social inequalities.
Our research asks: who benefits from digital innovation, who is excluded, and what kinds of futures are being imagined? Through this work, we aim to inform more equitable digital policies and practices, and support young people in navigating complex digital landscapes with agency and care.
Global gambling harms and young people in a digital age
Dr Darragh McGee has led research which examines the global impact of online gambling and how it is reshaping behaviours among young people.
One recent UK-based study adopted a multi-phase qualitative design, including participatory focus groups and interviews with 32 men, to explore how gambling is embedded in sports media, sponsorship, and fan culture.
Writing in the Journal of Public Health, Dr McGee highlights how a normalisation of online sports betting and ‘gamblification of sport’ over recent years has had detrimental impacts on the lives of young adult men. Promotional tactics like free bets hook users in, posing significant public health risks. The research highlights the need for stronger regulation, independent risk assessments, and youth safeguarding. With colleagues, he argues a comprehensive public health approach to gambling is urgently required.
Dr McGee has also recently led a co-creative participatory study, funded by the British Academy and Global Challenges Research Fund, that aimed to give voice to youth perspectives on the growth of commercial gambling across Sub-Saharan Africa, including its differentiated impacts on individual and community wellbeing.
Collaborating with academics, community health organisations, arts collectives across two Sub-Saharan African nations, Ghana and Malawi, the project worked collaboratively at all stages with 47 young people (18-25 year olds) to explore the changing social and economic significance of gambling in their communities, including the extent to which technological advances towards a digital economy have reshaped attitudes towards gambling practices, and how this may have wider implications for traditional conceptualisations of work, livelihood and social mobility. The study combined creative methods such as photovoice, community testimonies and youth-led storytelling to reveal how commercial gambling has become an embedded feature of everyday life for growing numbers of young people.
Far from a risk-free activity, the profound appeal and growing popularity of gambling has had a differentiated range of harmful consequences for the welfare and wellbeing of young people and their communities in Ghana and Malawi. The study has uncovered evidence of widespread harms, including social and financial precarity, indebtedness, relationship conflict and family breakdown, and mental health struggles. In this light, a major conclusion from the study concerns the growing importance of approaching gambling not merely as a leisure activity but as a major public health issue that requires more stringent policy intervention and state regulation to avoid widespread harms.
Digital health generation
Young people are increasingly turning to health and fitness apps, wearable trackers, and social media to monitor their wellbeing but research led by SPHERE Director Professor Emma Rich and colleagues reveals that without better education and oversight, these technologies risk doing as much harm as good.
The ‘digital health generation’ study, funded by the Wellcome Trust, investigated how young people engage with digital health technologies, such as apps, wearables, and online platforms. Conducted with researchers from the University of Bath, Salford, and UNSW, the study included surveys of over 1,000 young people (13-18 year olds), in-depth interviews, and data on experiences of using tracking technologies.
The Study revealed that Digital health is now part of everyday life and many start using health-related apps and devices as early as age eight. Young users value tracking and motivation – but also report anxiety, social pressure, and confusion about what constitutes “healthy” behaviour. In a paper published in the journal ‘youth’ she reports that in some cases, this can contribute to forms of body disaffection. Findings show mixed benefits and risks. While digital tools offer self-monitoring and goal-setting, they can also reinforce surveillance, narrow ideals of fitness, and confusion around reliable health advice.
The project was recognised with a Bristol and Bath Health and Care Research Impact Award for its significant public engagement and policy influence. It informed national guidelines for stakeholders in digital health — including parents, educators, policymakers, and industry leaders. In 2018, the team hosted the first national policy event on young people and digital health at the House of Commons, followed by a major conference in Bath in 2019, attended by over 150 professionals and young people. The project highlights the importance of critically assessing the assumptions built into digital health platforms and calls for more inclusive, youth-informed approaches to digital health design and policy
Building on this project, Professor Rich has collaborated with Dr Maria Jose Camacho Minano (University of Complutense) Dr Sarah MacIsaac and Dr Shirley Gray (University of Edinburgh) and Professor Kristiina Kumpulainen to co-develop and evaluate innovative pedagogical ideas relating to critical digital health in schools, and specifically, physical education.
Through this work, they have produced a guide for teachers on gender and social media, with a focus on the digital content focused on health and fitness. The guide, available here, is designed to help young people challenge gender norms about health in a digital world.