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Abstract
“Social media can provide opportunities to enhance the mental health of users by facilitating social connections and peer support” (Zsila & Reyes, 2023). Social connections and peer support are necessary for healthy adolescent development, however, excessive social media use can also lead to clear negative consequences. Our plan uses a multi-faceted approach to combat the negative effects of adolescent social media usage at a community, technological, and in-school level. Through the use of our app, MediaMindful, we aim to promote social well-being amongst adolescents, as well as create opportunities for community gatherings for teens to socialize, listen to talks about social and mental well-being, and compete in friendly sports and board games. These gatherings will include public speakers and discussions to help inform adolescents about the negative effects of excessive social media use and re-evaluate their relationship with screen time. Through our plan, we will incorporate low screentime competitions and the opportunity to earn rewards for less time spent on social media. We also aim to create monthly social gatherings, connect students to social workers, psychologists, and mental health counselors, and assist those who are struggling with social media addiction, which may result in increased levels of depression and anxiety. We recently surveyed 350 students at our school to help us understand more about social media use among teens, and we will use a post-plan survey to better understand the impact of our overall plan. At the community level, we will use posters to advertise our social media and mental health awareness activities outside of school. At the school level, our ideas include a homeroom screen time competition, guidance visits, and in-school assemblies with public speakers knowledgeable about the topic.
Relevance
Recent nationally representative statistics suggest that 95% of adolescents aged 13-18 have access to a smart-phone and 88% have access to a desktop or laptop at home, the majority of which use these phones and computers to access social media. Social media has been shown to lead to body image dissatisfaction, and can increase the risk of addiction and cyber bullying (Zsila & Reyes, 2023). These negative effects, which may have serious consequences in terms of mental health, overshadow the positive effects of social media. This tells us that we should strive to reduce or eliminate screen time from our everyday lives, especially for children and teengers, who may be more vulnerable. Our plan aims to improve adolescent mental health and reduce screen time addiction.
Specific Aims/Goals:
Our specific aims with this project will decrease social media usage by adolescents and as a result will gradually, yet significantly, decrease the negative mental health effects of teen social media use over time. We aim to decrease the average amount of social media usage through the promotion of social gatherings, low screen-time competitions, a social media support app, and awareness of the negative effects of social media.
Technological / Engineering Component
We can spread awareness about the negative effects of overusing social media by using our social media support app and advertisements on social media itself. By spreading awareness of overuse of social media on social media there is a greater chance of users stopping and taking time to assess themselves and their usage of social media.
Our social media support app will have AI support, personalized tech intervention methods, school tech intervention methods, and community intervention methods, as well as details about our program. The technological system on our app also features a ranking system, based on your ability to stick to a certain screen time plan (represented by Bronze, Silver, Gold, etc).The higher your rank, the more your weekly points (from your average weekly screen time) will be multiplied. Personal rewards will be available for low screen time on our app, MediaMindful. The higher your screen time is, the more points you lose from your total pre-earned points (1000 points). This causes people to be hesitant to watch social media, since it will lead to a larger point reduction. Reward points can be totaled by this equation:
X = minutes of screen time Y = rank (higher rank = higher multiplier — (1000 - x) * y = t
These points can be redeemed for various prizes, including gift cards to restaurants, popular clothing brands, or entertainment. Lastly, regular guidance counselor meetings can be viewed and scheduled through our app. You will be able to choose a cause for the meeting (anger, depression, jealousy), so the counselor is properly equipped to handle the situation appropriately.
Scientific Research Assessment
The plan specifically targets our audience with a survey consisting of questions asking details of their social media usage and its mental, social, and emotional effects on the user. The users then suggested ideas as to how to lower their usage of social media. We incorporated some of their ideas into our project.
We plan to implement screen time competitions to see who can use screens the least. We hope this can reduce the urge of students to mindlessly scroll. This can target a psychological factor in students to make all of them participate competitively, and avoid criticism from other classmates.
Public Policy Strategy
Social media use may be tied to negative mental health outcomes including suicidality, loneliness and decreased empathy (Berryman et al., 2017). It is critical to rid these emotions in children when they are still impressionable as to make sure no mental health problems or addictions form. We plan to take reasonable measures to break the habit of social media use.
We plan to create monthly social gatherings with board games, sports, social speaker events, and other community building activities so students have their tools to support them so that students have less depression. There we also have mental health talks at least twice a month so the students know how to get help when they need it. We also plan to make guidance counselor meetings once a month for each student to check in on them every month.
Another public policy our team has in mind is a banning of non-utility apps in public spaces. These include libraries and schools.
Project Plan / Strategy
Significance
Our solution looks forward to combatting the major issue of declining social interaction and increasing screen time. Over the past few years, our school body has been using social media more often and to longer extents. Our solution will address this crisis by promoting social connection and educating students about the negative effects of social media. We know that our plan will lower the negative screen time effects and increase positive social interactions. and other heavy bans when people learn to use social media responsibly.
Innovation
Our app, Media Mindful, will serve as the face of our project.The app consists of our AI, BuddyBot, a companion you can talk with to confront your social media issues. The app will also include a hierarchical point-based rewards system based on your screen time usage screen time usage. Plans range from Bronze, Silver, Ruby, Gold, Platinum, and Diamond. As you level up your rank, the difficulty of the screen time plan increases. Therefore, it is harder to maintain a higher plan. Our app will also hold the dates to upcoming social events (talked about below and in Public Policy),
Our team used a survey to understand the users problems with social media and find solutions to them by using our own AI called Buddy Bot. Buddy Bot is an AI chat bot that will chat with users about their social media and mental health related classes..
Possible student conversation with our AI, BuddyBot.
Approach
Our approach to solve the issue of overusing social media and feeling negative emotions because of it is to implement our social media awareness app in a one step process. We have multiple steps of implementation based upon severity, but our app will be one of our first priorities. We will advertise our app on social media, to target our desired scrolling audience. We have to target the source, by providing ads on said source. We will make this ad enticing to the listener so those who struggle with mental health problems due to social media will be directed to our AI.
In step 3: We start rewarding homerooms, in an additional step this can be spread to many different schools nationwide. Homerooms with the lowest average screen time on their phones will get a reward of a pizza party. This contest will be held throughout the year. This gives an incentive to reduce social media usage. Will monitor the average time used by students on their ipad for non school work. The average of the time will be calculated each week. Then at the end of every two months, the average from each week will be averaged and they will be compared with other homerooms. The homeroom with the least average screen time for those two months will receive an afterschool pizza party. However, instead of the regular pizza party at the end of the school year as the reward, we will take the weekly average from each homeroom for the whole year and compare them. They will then get an after school trip to a restaurant for free.
Project Assessment and Impact
A reliable way to analyze our project's results is crucial, since we would be able to clearly see our success in helping the mental health of others.Our team figured that direct response through our clients would be the simplest way to track our impact.
We plan to distribute two similar surveys, our pre-survey and a post survey to see the effect of our plan on students' mental health. Our pre-survey will be used to see the overall mental health status of students and the toll social media has on it. Our post-survey is to see any changes in response; a positive change (lower screen time / less anxiety) would confirm a positive impact on our audience.
Another way to know if the project is successful is through our screen time competition. We can analyze our results to see if there is an average decrease in social media use from before the competition. Our team will view the plan as a success if screen time decreases by a minimum of 10%.
Analyzing suggestions and other responses from our app, MediaMindful, will tell us if we improved situations for the people that have used our app. Then we would filter this into our AI, Buddy Bot, to help more people. Feeding more information to our AI about what is useful in helping students combat addiction and excessive social media use will help to improve its capabilities. Overall response quality and mechanism will then be impacted greatly.
Impacts
The project has the mental health of students at its top priority. By making students aware of the consequences of excess screen time and creating a personal environment limiting it, our plan positively impacts students.
The impact of our screen time competition holds an important role in our project. The goal of our project is to help students improve their mental health and decrease screen time usage. Our plan assists us in carving the way to permanent social media awareness, relieving their screen time. Decreasing screen time is directly associated with a healthier overall lifestyle. A recent study found that excessive screen use in adolescents was associated with decreased physical activity, decreased psychological well-being, sleep difficulties, and behavioral difficulties (Wanka et al., 2025). The impact of our project is important because it provides the needed support to make screen time and social media addiction a thing of the past.
Resources
Disclaimer: As our project is in early stages, all potential resources may not be listed.
Space is a major necessity for this plan. The space would be used for conducting the social gatherings (discussed in Public Policy).
Parks and public outdoor places can be an easy option for this since they are a free area, but it is vulnerable to weather conditions. Indoor community centers can be a good place for public gatherings. They can be a free entry or cheap entry place that allows for much room. Depending on the community center they might not allow food or drink. They also might not allow sports but they may allow board games.
Restaurants will be needed for our school plans (discussed in X). To host a pizza party for the winning screen time competition team, we will need a large pizza for the entire class. The pizza will be for both the gatherings and screen time competition rewards
Sports and board game equipment are needed for said gatherings. The equipment can vary from each gathering for more variety and interest by students.
Computers to code and update our app, MediaMindful.
Personnel
A social media expert / social speaker would be valuable. Can be a different person each gathering. We hope the events are popular enough to the fact that local leaders will volunteer to speak.
Graphic Designers are required to design the app layout and appeal. An attractive and simplistic app is crucial to maintain a steady flow of users. Designers would also create the advertisements for our app. Ads should quickly gain the interest of our audience, so we can gain traction on our app.
Team of workers set up our social media gatherings. The workers would be hopefully volunteers, to avoid more expense (making gatherings easier to create long-term).
Volunteers — we will recruit students to help with necessary jobs
School faculty can help to facilitate screen time competitions. Responsible for creating prizes and alerting students of competition progress.
School guidance counselors are needed for students to schedule their appointments. Our school already has these counselors, so it is no extra expense.
In order to carry out our plan we need to gather a number of workers such as coders, school faculty, graphic designers, and volunteers, we can use coders to make our AI,
References
Berryman, C., Ferguson, C. J., & Negy, C. (2017). Social Media Use and Mental Health among Young Adults. Psychiatric Quarterly, 89(2), 307–314. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11126-017-9535-6
Nesi, J. (2020). The impact of social media on youth mental health. North Carolina Medical Journal, 81(2), 116–121. https://doi.org/10.18043/ncm.81.2.116
Wanka, F., Vogel, M., Grafe, N., Aßmann, M., Kiess, W., & Poulain, T. (2025). Leisure activities of adolescents—associations with demographic characteristics, well-being and parental leisure engagement. Pediatric Research. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41390-025-03866-9
Zsila, Á., & Reyes, M. E. S. (2023). Pros & cons: impacts of social media on mental health. BMC Psychology, 11(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-023-01243-x
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