Abstract
In recent years, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has noted an increase in the number of young individuals suffering from Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs). In addition, NCDs are becoming more common among South African young people. The high rate of smartphone usage in South Africa provides an opportunity to develop mobile applications to encourage young people to embrace healthier lives. This study explored the possible use of mobile health applications to encourage youth to engage in healthy physical activity using the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model as the theoretical lens. A survey questionnaire was used to collect data from 320 participants using convenient sampling. The findings revealed that the factors influencing youth's adoption of mobile health applications that encourage healthy physical activity are facilitating conditions, social influence (SI), performance expectancy (PE), and effort expectancy (EE). Thus, mobile application-driven interventions that aim to encourage young people to be active should consider the constructs identified in this study that have a higher effect size.