Enhancing Digital Well-Being
Happy Scroll aims to inspire Chapman University students to enhance their own digital well-being. This peer-driven initiative is designed to support undergraduate students’ pursuit of digital flourishing by enhancing awareness of healthy media practices and offering resources to support authentic and inclusive interactions during media use.
The Issue
Along with my classmates, we saw an issue with social media use effecting or well-being - we were using digital media too much, following accounts that created anxiety, comparing ourselves to our friends - and we wanted to change the way we used social media to create a positive experience.
The Campaign
We built a campaign aimed to encourage healthy social media habits. We held events, information tables, and created a digital platform to spread awareness of the mental health effects of social media and how we can be positively plugged in.
Enhance your digital well-being.
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Development
Between 30 students, we divided into six groups to develop and implement a successful campaign. We began with an idea to change the way social media effected our well-being and developed a series of tests, surveys, and focus groups to execute this campaign in a way out target audience would understand. Once we came up with an idea and divided, we conquered. We began creating a social media presence, announcing our event times, surveying our target audience, and holding focus groups. We collected pre-testing data to determine how we wanted to run the campaign.
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Implementation
Once we observed the data from the pre-testing stage, we began the core campaign. We held information tabling sessions within our campus for eight days. These sessions included spreading awareness, sharing tips, and gaining knowledge on how students use social media on a daily basis and the effect it has on them. We also held two events with incentives to encourage the community to join. We shared more informative facts, tips, and awareness on how to use media in a more mindful way.
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Hypothesis
We tested two things within our campaign: technology-life boundaries and authenticity on social media. We tested this through surveying our target audience before our campaign and after our campaign through a series of questions based on social media and digital well-being habit questions. We hypothesized that due to our campaign, the technology-life boundaries would be higher in out post-test than it was in the pre-test. We also hypothesized authenticity on social media would be higher on the post-test than the pre-test.
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Participants
Our target audience who contributed in our pre and post-tests, focus groups, and events was Chapman University students aged 18-24. Our demographic consisted of various majors, genders, and race. They all had an array of social media behaviors that allowed us to gain a large idea of their overall media use.
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Data
We collected data continuously throughout the campaign, but mostly within our pre and post tests. We send surveys out to our target audience with questions on their demographics, social media habits, and well-being. The data was collected on a nominal and collective scale that allowed us average the data to determine the hypothesis testing.
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Results
Our results indicated there was not much change in our target audiences habits or behaviors. This means our hypothesis was proven wrong and our campaign did not improve the overall digital well-being on Chapman University students.
Data Analysis
There were a total of 638 (n= 638, 100%) students within our sample combined between our pretest (n=426, 66.78%) and our posttest (n=212, 33.23%).
Within our total sample, we had an average age of 20.48, a standard deviation of 1.381, and a range of 18-30.
Pre-Test: Out of the 426 students in the pre-test, all students access social media from their smartphone (n smartphone= 426, 100%). 193 students access social media from the laptop (n laptop= 193, 45.3%), whereas 233 students do not access social media from the laptop (n no laptop= 233, 54.7%). Only 19 students access social media from their desktop computer (n desktop comp.= 19, 4.5%), and 407 students do not (n no desktop comp.= 407,95.5%). Finally, only one student does not access social media (n no soc. media= 1, 0.2%), and 425 students access social media (n social media= 425, 99.8%).
Post-test: Out of the 212 students in the post-test, all students access social media from their smartphones (n smartphone= 212, 100%). 99 students access social media from their laptop (n laptop= 99, 46.7%), and 113 students do not access social media from their laptop (n no laptop= 113, 53.3%). Only 7 Students access social media from their desktop computer (n desktop comp.= 7, 3.3%), while the other 205 students do not (n no desktop comp.= 205, 96.7%). Finally, there are no students that refrain from using social media (n no social media= 0, 0%), which means all students do not refrain from using social media (n social media= 212, 100%).
In our pre-test analysis, there were 118 male students (n= 118, 27.7%), 302 female students (n= 302, 71.1%), and 5 non-binary students (n= 5, 1.2%). In our post-test analysis, there were 64 male students (n= 64,30.2%) and 148 female students (n= 148, 69.8%).
In our pre-test, there were 426 students who took the pretest. The majority of students were White (n= 281, 66%), followed by Asian (n=62, 14.6%),
Multiracial (n=29, 6.8%), Hispanic/Latinx (n=23, 5.4%), Middle Eastern (n=21, 4.9%), Black (n=4, 0.9%), with Native American (n=1, 0.2%).
In our post-test, there were 212 students White (n=138, 65.1%), Asian (n=33, 15.6%), Multiracial (n=20, 9.4%), Hispanic/Latinx (n=13, 6.1%), Middle Eastern (n=5, 2.4%), Native American (n=0, 0%), Black (n=0, 0%).
Of the 426 pretest responses, the mean of the technology-life boundaries scale is 2.70, which was on a 1-5 numeric scale. The standard deviation of the technology-life boundaries scale is 0.76. The reliability (Cronbach’s Alpha) of the technology-life boundaries scale is 0.73, meaning that the test had a strong internal consistency above 0.7).
Of the 212 post-test responses, the mean of the technology-life boundaries scale is 2.70, which was on a 1-5 numeric scale. The standard deviation of the technology-life boundaries scale is 0.79. The reliability (Cronbach’s Alpha) of the technology-life boundaries scale is 0.77, meaning that the test had a strong internal consistency (above 0.7).
In our pre-test, there were 33 (n=33, 7.7%) First-Year students being the least frequency of class standing increased by Seniors (n=83, 19.5%), Sophomores (n=107, 25.1%), and the most at Juniors (n=203, 47.7%).
In our post-test, there were 16 (n=16, 7.5%) First-Year students, followed by Sophomores (n=43, 20.3%), Seniors (n=53, 25.0%), and Juniors (n=100, 47.2%).
Evaluation
A successful two-week long campaign is one that raises awareness on the issue it is combating - and we did just that. Though we didn’t see much change within our target audience and their behaviors, we were able to raise a lot of awareness in University students. Had the campaign been longer, we have the potential to create an actual change in digital media habits within students and users all over the world. HappyScroll was just a jumping off point to creating a mindful media platform that would inspire others to think a little more before mindlessly scrolling.