Using a weight-loss app? Study of millennials says it doesn't help much

If you're hoping that smartphones are going to solve all our health problems, we've got some disappointing news for you.

Young American adults own smartphones at a higher rate than any other age group. Researchers from Duke University wanted to see if capitalizing on that with a low-cost weight-loss app might help the 35 percent of young adults in the country who are overweight or obese.

No such luck. The smartphone app didn't help young adults lose any more weight than if they hadn't been using the app.

The study, which was published in the journal Obesity, looked at 365 adults ages 18 to 35. A third of the participants used an Android app specifically created for the study. It not only tracked their calories, weight and exercise, but also offered interactive features like goal setting, games and social support.

Another third of the participants received six weekly personal coaching sessions, followed by monthly phone follow-ups. This group also was encouraged to track their weight, calories and exercise via smartphone.

The last third of the participants were given three handouts on healthy eating and exercise — and nothing else.

Researchers tracked the participants' progress after six months, one year and two years. The personal coaching group had lost more weight than the other two groups after six months, but that lead vanished at the one- and two-year follow-ups. As for the group using the smartphone app, their average weight loss was never more than the other two groups.

"Given the seeming power of cellphone apps and frankly the popularity of these health and fitness apps in the commercial world, we thought this might be a really good strategy to provide effective intervention very broadly and potentially at low cost," said Svetkey, a professor of medicine at Duke University School of Medicine.

It's difficult to get the same level of intensity in an app that you might get through personal coaching, she said, and people have a tendency to stop using weight-loss apps after a while.

"We know that in general, the more engaged people are in intervention, the more they're going to succeed from it," Svetkey said. "And so, perhaps, we need to rethink how to make a weight-loss intervention on your cellphone more engaging."

Yet that's not to say these apps won't work for certain people in certain circumstances, she said. These study results aren't reason to give up hope about the potential for weight-loss apps, Svetkey added, but are instead reason to intensify research efforts in this area. More work is needed to understand how to harness these technologies and leverage their strengths in a way that will lead people to change their eating and exercise behaviors, she said.

Weight Watchers, which uses a combination of apps and coaching in a group setting, and MyFitnessPal, a very popular food and exercise tracking app, didn't respond to requests for comment.