**1. Introduction**

Individuals set health-related goals all the time. While some of them want to quit smoking, others are seeking to run a half marathon, lose some pounds, or keep their diabetes in check. According to the theory of planned behavior [1], individuals have all the necessary resources, skills, and abilities to perform the behavior at will. However, successful behavior change does not happen at once. For some, a little nudge is needed to encourage them to take the required

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steps to attain a health-related goal [2]. Technology, and specifically Smartphone Apps and wearable devices can provide the incentives, feedback, and information individuals need to take their health into their own hands and improve their wellbeing. At the same time, social support can also become a tool to help those individuals who are willing to change their unhealthy behaviors, but need some encouragement and instrumental assistance to reach their health goals [3], such support can be provided face-to-face, or with the use of digital technology that allows individuals to gather in social network sites (SNSs) to seek and receive health advice and encouragement.

To gain a deeper understanding on how individuals use technology and social network sites to improve their health, a qualitative study was conducted in three stages. Phase 1 includes a netnography on two health-related Facebook communities conducted for a six-month period. In the second phase, in-depth interviews were conducted with five bariatric surgery patients. As part of their recovery, they created a Whatasapp and a Telegram group to receive encouragement and provide tips to keep the weight off and eat balanced meals. In the third phase, in-depth interviews were conducted with individuals who use their Smartphones as tools to monitor their health-related activities. All in-depth interviews were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed; for the netnography online, data were captured in text files using word-processing software, photos, and the other images published by SNS users were captured as screen shots of the computer screen as they appeared online [4, 5]. Then we conducted a content analysis that allowed us to gain a better understanding of how individuals make use of digital technologies to take care of their health issues.

In this chapter, we seek to present our findings and illustrate on the use of technology as a tool to increase health and wellbeing. In the first part, we explore key concepts regarding the use of digital technologies and present some theoretical bases of social support and behavioral economics; finally, we describe the findings of our qualitative study to illustrate how individuals are using the Internet and digital technologies to improve their lifestyle.
