Mapping Healthy Lifestyle Imbalance on Instagram Reels: A Content Analysis on Diet, Exercise, and Sleep

Objectives: To conduct a content analysis of Instagram Reels (2023-2025) promoting healthy-lifestyle routines, as well as mapping the frequency of diet, exercise, and sleep tips, while evaluating how motivational, instructional, and aesthetic appeals relate to engagement. Background: Young adults (18–26) increasingly turn to micro-videos for health advice. In one Australian study, 84% of participants sought diet, exercise, or sleep tips on social media, yet only a third checked the credibility. Audits of 443 popular Instagram “health” accounts reveal that beauty-driven promotions outweigh evidence-based content. TikTok analyses echo these trends, linking diet-culture messaging to anxiety and risky behaviors. However, no study has yet examined how Instagram Reels portray holistic lifestyle guidance—a gap this project will address. Methods: To initiate the content analysis, we sourced six Instagram Reels from January 2023 to June 2025 with the following hashtags: #healthyroutine, #wellness, and #selfcare. Subsequently, we created a rubric to evaluate how the clips conveyed diet, exercise, sleep, and tone, which consisted of themes such as inspirational and motivational, educational, relatable and humorous, aesthetic lifestyle, or shaming. A total of four independent viewers analyzed the reels, providing meaningful subjective insights based on the provided criteria. Results: Among twenty-four Instagram Reel views, diet advice appeared most frequently (87.5%), followed by exercise (37.5%) and sleep (16.7%). A χ² goodness-of-fit test confirmed significance (χ² = 13.20, p = 0.022). In contrast, the corresponding separate χ² test for the tone of the reels indicated insignificant values of χ² = 5.58 and p = 0.23. Conclusions: The significant dominance of diet content framing suggests that Instagram Reels provide unbalanced lifestyle guidance for young adults. Future interventions on social media should amplify exercise and sleep messaging to deliver more comprehensive, evidence-based health advice with an educational tone.