The Ethics of Strava
In the age of social media, it seems as if there are countless platforms that are specifically designed for us to share every detail of every aspect of our lives. There are the big platforms that it seems like everyone is using, such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and TikTok, but there are so many other platforms that encourage users to share their opinions on even the most niche interests. If you are into reading, there are platforms like Goodreads or Listy. If you are a big film buff, there is Letterboxd. For interior designers there is Houzz, for IT nerds there is Stack Overflow, and the list goes on and on. On the surface, these platforms seem like harmless ways for people who share similar interests to come together and share their thoughts and meet people like them. However, we have overlooked the harm that some of these platforms can have on their users.
Specifically, I am talking about Strava. Strava, or the ‘social network for athletes’, is a social fitness platform that allows users to track and share their athletic activities. All types of athletes can use Strava, you could be a runner, hiker, or a swimmer, or even if you are into something niche like kitesurfing, snowshoeing, or badminton, you too could be a Strava user. Once you have uploaded your workout to Strava, you’ll be provided with many tools and data points that give a deeper insight into your activity and help support you in your training. However, the big thing that sets Strava apart from other fitness tracking apps is the social aspect. On Strava, you can follow your friends to see what kind of workout they post, give “kudos” which is just the Strava version of likes, and leave comments on your friends’ posts. There are also clubs, where you can join a group of people you know and the app will show who has put in the most miles for the week. Similarly, there are leaderboards where the athletes who have run the fastest in your area are recognized for their achievements. Clearly, Strava is always looking for a way to compare its users to each other, and reward people for working out harder and more often. The idea behind Strava is to get people motivated to stay active and encourage healthy competition between friends, but in reality it can be extremely harmful to its users. I personally had some negative experiences with Strava, as it focuses heavily on the social media aspect of the platform, and many of these social media-like features can lead to obsessive behaviors. Strava also relies on its user’s sharing their location with the app and their followers, which can jeopardize the safety of the user. Strava needs to be more transparent about these dangers for the sake of their users.
I first downloaded Strava when I was in high school. I was on the cross country and track teams and my coach recommended that we download the app so that he could see the runs we were doing, and so that we could see the runs that our teammates were going on as well. I initially thought this was a fun idea, but I also started to feel some pressure about the kind of activities I was posting on Strava. Not only did I want to impress my coach, but I wanted to make sure that I was going on runs that were as fast or faster than my teammates that were at a similar skill level as me. There had always been some healthy competition on my team, as that is natural, but I felt myself starting to become obsessed with being the fastest one, and Strava gave me detailed metrics of exactly how fast I was compared to my teammates. An important part of training is having rest days and slow days, where you let your body recover by either taking a day off or going on shorter, slower runs, but because of Strava, I wanted to run fast even on the days I was supposed to be taking a break. Eventually, I would not even post a run on Strava if I thought it was not up to my standards, and that is when I realized that I was taking it a bit too seriously. If another one of my teammates was looking at my Strava the way that I was looking at theirs, it would not be a good representation of how I was actually training, and would set a bad example. I eventually started to be more honest with myself and with my team, but it scared me just how fast Strava made me addicted to outperforming the people I was supposed to be supporting. In some ways though, I was lucky because I only allowed people I trusted to follow me on Strava, and no one took advantage of the fact that they had my location of where I would start and stop my runs or some common routes I could take. However, in the wrong hands this information could be very dangerous. People don’t always pay close attention to who they let follow them on social media apps, and Strava is no different. But with Strava, your followers have your location, which could lead to some serious privacy issues.
I am not the only one who can fall victim to the obsessive tendencies that Strava encourages, it can affect many users without them even realizing it. The main reason that many people download and use Strava is so that they can share their athletic activities with their friends, as well as to see what activities their friends are posting. In Jenny L. Davis and James B. Chouinard’s article Theorizing Affordances: From Request to Refuse, they explain how everything has affordances, or the potential uses, and how there are different levels to how an artifact can afford. One example is that items can encourage certain behaviors, or “foster, breed, and nourish some line of action, while stifling, suppressing, and dissuading others”. Strava is no stranger to encouraging its users into certain behaviors, which has proven to be harmful. Whether it is getting kudos and comments from friends, earning badges from challenges, or climbing local leaderboards, users of Strava are rewarded for running further, faster, and more often than their fellow athletes. A study done at the National University of Ireland, Galway found that while these features can help many people stay motivated, others are negatively affected by the competition that the app encourages. The authors revealed that some Strava users possess an obsessive passion for exercise, and the constant comparison that is found on the app only worsens this obsession and leads to burnout. Strava also encourages its users to share their location. So many of Strava’s features require users to share their location with the app, and a few of those features even require users to share their locations with their followers and the public. This forces some users who may not be comfortable with sharing their location to do so anyway, since it is the only way for them to use the app.
As you can see, it is clear we do not pay enough attention to apps like Strava that are not as obviously harmful as the more popular social media apps. With Instagram and TikTok, people are constantly preaching about body image and how not everything you see on social media is real. These apps even have warnings when certain posts may be triggering to some people or harmful to their mental health. But when it comes to Strava, an app that focuses on how ‘healthy’ you are, there are no such warnings. When a user downloads Strava, they are completely unaware of the negative side effects that this app could have on their mental health. Because Strava is so focused on promoting itself as a platform that encourages healthy habits, they do not warn their users about the dangers that go along with using the app. Being healthy and exercising is important, but just as with anything else, excessive exercising can become dangerous. Overall, it is important that users be mindful of their mental health and privacy, and to use the app in a way that feels positive and supportive. Strava also needs to be more open with its users about how their app can negatively affect them, instead of encouraging unsafe behaviors for the sake of the growth of their platform.
