Investigation the Intervention Mitigating Problematic Social Media Engagement Among High School Students

Abstract

Adolescents of 21st century mature in an advancing digital era, where their vulnerabilities are often exposed to a world driven by powerful algorithms. The present study proposes an innovative design scheme that potentially tackles problematic engagement with social media, from both motivational and neurobiological perspectives, with the aim of unveiling the underlying mechanisms regarding social media addiction. This design solution promotes transparency of individuals’ personal usage behaviours through a simple prompt, “why are you here?”, thereby activating individual’s deliberate decisionmaking system. In study I, we conducted a two-phase survey involving 92 high school teenagers and collected empirical data on the correlations between goal-oriented social media use and mental health variables. In addition, a practical design intervention was developed and assessed with 36 participants over ten days to validate its effectiveness. The consequences indicated notable reductions in actual social media engagement time, as well as a decrease in distractedness. This research offers a novel motivation-driven digital behaviour and contributes to the existing empirical database on social media addiction by providing both theoretical insights and practical applications.