ISLAMABAD: The researchers said in a new study that social media competition can dramatically increase people’s fitness by pushing them to exercise more. “Framing the social interaction as a competition can create positive social norms for exercising,” said lead author Jingwen Zhang, assistant professor at the University of California, Davis. Social competition among people may go beyond exercise, to encourage healthy behaviours such as medication compliance, diabetes control, smoking cessation, flu vaccinations, weight loss, and preventative screening, as well as pro-social behaviours like voting, recycling, and lowering power consumption. On the other hand, friendly support makes people less likely to go to the gym less than simply leaving them alone, the study said. In the competitive groups, people frame relationships in terms of goal-setting by the most active members, Medical Xpress reported. For this study, the team recruited nearly 800 graduate and professional students from the University of Pennsylvania to sign up for an 11-week exercise programme, all managed through a website the researchers built. Competition motivated participants to exercise the most, with attendance rates 90 per cent higher in the competitive groups than in the control group.