Choose your own adventure: A novel intervention to regulate social media use in adolescents with depression

About This Grant

Abstract Adolescents with depression may be particularly vulnerable to developing problematic patterns of social media use. There is a need for effective, and sustainable tools to help teens with depression to regulate their social media use. In our prior qualitative studies of 50+ young social media users and their experiences with the technological ecosystem, we observed something we call the “runaway train” effect, in which the combination of problematic content, excessive use and a perceived lack of control results in negative impacts on wellbeing. Our results demonstrated that the runaway train effect is heavily driven by both the algorithmic organization of content and the content itself. Participants described how algorithms drive unhealthy patterns of over- engagement and poor self-regulation, (i.e., getting “stuck” looking at content and continuously scrolling despite awareness of the damaging impact on their wellbeing.) In our theoretical framework, excessive exposure to negative content leads to self-dysregulation and loss of wellness-promoting activities; these changes in turn amplify and maintain persistent low moods of depression. To address this, we draw on the feedback from our young adult participants, who said that when caught in the runaway train, they wanted to be given a set of options to break out of it. We now propose to develop and test a novel, personalized intervention designed to disrupt the “runaway train” effect of social media use in adolescents with depression in a way that is acceptable and sustainable. Centering the preferences of the young participants in our prior qualitative studies, the Choose Your Own Adventure (CYOA) application (app) is a personalized approach, designed to promote agency rather than “forcing” discontinued use. Adolescents will collaborate with the research team to identify situations or patterns in their social media use that may be harming their well-being. The app will then sense and characterize content and engagement patterns; when it detects a “runaway train” according to the pre- defined threshold, it will offer options according to the personalized plan. Adolescents will then select from a set of pre-specified options for what to do when needed (e.g., pause for 30 minutes, reboot settings, remove problematic content from the feed). Following technical development during the first year of the grant period, we will conduct a mixed-methods pilot study in 45 adolescents with depression to test the feasibility, acceptability, preliminary impact and mechanism of CYOA versus a standard timer and no intervention. In addition to self report data, we will collect objective data on social media algorithmic behavior and user behavior. We will also conduct interviews with adolescents to establish a co-creation process to inform the next steps of the research. This project will shed light on the links between social media use and depression in teens, and will pave the way toward an innovative, person-centered and personally-tailored intervention to help teens regulate their social media use.