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Self-care with Health and Fitness Apps

Posted Jan 3, 2022

During the start of the pandemic, people’s routines were upended with the closure of many businesses and services used in everyday lives. Gyms and fitness studios were closed making health and fitness apps even more valuable and necessary. Naturally, the number of users using those apps skyrocketed. As the pandemic continues and people focus on health for new year resolutions, health and fitness apps are in the spotlight once again.

In 2021, there were 87.4 million users of telehealth and health/fitness apps, a number which is anticipated to be consistent through this year with the possibility to grow even more. Many of these health enthusiasts are also mobile gamers. Or, to be more accurate, mobile gamers tend to also leverage apps in the health and fitness category for their own convenience and well-being.

AdColony’s The Life of the Mobile Gamer Report takes a close look at how mobile gamers use apps to stay fit, keep healthy habits, and practice overall self-care. Read on for highlights from the report!

Mobile gamers are twice as likely to use an app to track their fitness activities.

Our survey results with GWI showed that nearly 4 in 10 mobile gamers use an app that tracks their physical activity, such as a Fitbit. That’s double the average for the U.S. mobile user, which according to Gallup is 19%, indicating that mobile gamers are twice as likely to use an app to track their fitness activities. Additionally, more than a quarter of mobile gamers are using apps the track calories with titles like MyFitnessPal and Weight Watchers.

Apps are being used for a variety of self-care needs.

Mobile gamers aren’t just using smartphones to track their fitness and calories. Many users are monitoring sleep and fertility cycles on apps. While it’s a smaller percentage, a significant number are using apps for their medical needs, such as connecting directly to a healthcare professional like Teladoc or to get mental health services (e.g., Talkspace, Headspace). They’re also using apps to pick up prescriptions, get medication reminders, and book medical appointments.

Booking medical appointments online is becoming easier and more common.

Approximately 1 in 5 mobile gamers says they use apps to book in-person healthcare appointments, either on their smartphone or tablet. The app market for booking medical appointments has not yet matured to the point where consumers associate booking with apps. Rather, about half of respondents (50%) are still booking online on a website, whether it be on their desktop/PC (27%) or on the mobile web via their smartphone (16%) or tablet (4%).

Five years ago, less than 10% of consumers used web, email, or text to set up appointments and 76% were using the phone – the trend is clear. Online appointment scheduling will become more prominent, as it saves time, money and better serves the younger client base. As more medical offices offer it, we expect the phone call frequency to drop and the web and app booking incidents to increase.

Want to learn more about the consumer behavior of the American mobile gamer? The Life of a Mobile Gamer report has more on mobile gaming demographics as well as data on the car buying process, food and alcohol preferences, entertainment consumption, and more!  

About the Study

The survey was developed by AdColony and GWI and distributed online to mobile gamers. All figures in the study (unless noted otherwise) are drawn from GWI’s online research among U.S. internet users who are mobile gamers aged 16-64 via an online questionnaire. GWI only interviews respondents aged 16-64, and their figures are representative of the online populations of each market, not its total population. The survey garnered a total of 1,044 respondents in the U.S. over an eight-day period in Q2 2021.

About GWI

GWI is a target audience company that provides consumer insight across 47 countries to the world’s leading brands, communication agencies, and media organizations. The company runs a global survey representing more than 2 billion connected consumers, which offers up to over 40,000 data points on the behaviors and perceptions of internet users around the world. Using the subscription-based platform, clients including Twitter, Google, Spotify, WPP, IPG, and Omnicom Group can gather in-depth insights into audience behaviors, attitudes, and interests through a combination of survey data and analytics.

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