Check out Sparkteens.com

ALL ABOUT SPARKTEENS.COM

In looking over creating a Behaviour Modification in the Public Health realm this weekend, I followed many links suggested by our PHBM team. Many websites cost money to enroll or were member-related. I found a great website that had so many of the possibilities of a great fitness website, that I think it will spur me to think of how the social media fits in and how advertising may fit in as well. I really liked the store and the retail potential for our non-profit organization which has to raise funds to run a marketing plan.

The website is called www.sparkteens.com and it is completely FREE for users. It is designed as a healthy zone for teens. You will find teens who want to build muscles, lose weight and who are concerned about eating disorders. It is not only a forum, it has many tools to track a “healthy lifestyle” and the emphasis is on community. There are adult coaches available for “real life problems” as well.

The only hitch is ....in order to see this website, you have to list your birthdate as somewhere in between 1992 and 1997 in order to participate. So you have to pretend to be a teen. After you check out all the features, you can easily delete your account. It is pretty simple to get on and off.

I love this website because it does everything we've been talking about.

Community: Lets you build your own webpage/profile (using your own colors!!) and collect "friends" with common goals or interests. Join a "team" which has common likes such as rock and roll team, all guys’ team, pet lover’s team, etc...teams meant to encourage teens to talk to each other. Each team has an adult coach to moderate the discussions. There are “rules” of discussion

Fitness Tracker: You can build in your own fitness routine or search through 10-20 minute workout videos (many videos available) for daily choices. FT records calories burned and hours logged.

Nutrition Tracker: Choose between pre-set likes and dislikes and the website creates menu choices for you, or log your daily food intake and it will log your calories eaten or nutrition gained depending on your personal settings. There are meal plans, recipe choices and even shopping lists.

Measurement Tracker: Keeps track of your body measurements.

Content: Has articles on participants success stories, teen issues such as puberty, acne, anorexia, obesity, soccer and dating which may relate to health issues. Coach’s participation articles about new information available to teens.

Blog writing: You can start a blog telling about your journey or just writing about anything you wish.

Rewards: Every time you fill in a tracker or update your fitness levels you win POINTS and this translates to motivational trophies. You can talk to friends and add friends to your webpage and earn points in that way also. In other words you are encouraged to reach out and find community and talk to others about your goals.

Much more: I didn’t have time to explore all of the tools and pages. There was so much that was interesting, I earned about 90 points just clicking around and adding different selections for my webpage. I almost earned a trophy before logging out and I found it to be a fun and easy to navigate website which was very well thought out. I think Michelle Obama needs to use this forum for her message. This one really has potential to reach kids.

I showed it to my 13 year old son today and even though he doesn’t have a weight issue, he signed up and is now recording his daily sit-ups and basketball activity to earn POINTS. He loved the videos on weight training and has already connected with a “girl” who is anorexic in Sweden! Wow! Not sure what you do with the points you earn, but the kids seem to like accruing them and bragging about them, so it is definitely working for some of the kids. Plus the stories are very inspirational.

Thanks for reading….check it out for yourself.
Bevin