Social+Me: a persuasive application to increase communication between students and their support networks in Southern Chile

Communication preferences and connection through technology

Young adults spend 3 h a day on average using their smartphones doing activities such as e-mailing, social networking, text messaging, chatting, searching, reading and gaming (Lopez-Fernandez et al., 2017). Social communication has been the main reason students go online, even as early as 2002 (Jones et al., 2009). Previous research has found that university students prefer instant messaging over the phone or face-to-face contact to maintain social ties, using different communication patterns to interact with different contacts (Quan-Haase, 2007; O’Hara et al., 2014). Technology contributes to connecting students and their families: parents and university students rely heavily on technology to maintain contact (Ramsey, Oberhauser & Gentzler, 2015), especially when students live far away from home.

In the past few years, young adults in the US have used social networks such as Facebook, YouTube and Instagram, Tumblr, Snapchat, and Vibe (Lenhart et al., 2010; Villanti et al., 2017; Poushter, Bishop & Chwe, 2018)—for example, in 2021, 95% of adults 18 to 29 use YouTube (Pew Research Center, 2021). There are large generational differences in social media use—e.g., young adults 18 to 24 are much more likely to use Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok than others (Pew Research Center, 2021). In Chile, the most common social networks used by younger adults are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram (Poushter, Bishop & Chwe, 2018), and WhatsApp (Gómez-Urrutia & Tello-Navarro, 2020).

It is not yet clear whether social media and technology helps or hinders social connectedness. Some studies have found that higher social media use correlates to lower social isolation among older adults (Hajek & König, 2019). Conversely, for young adults, higher social media use has been found to correlate with higher perceived social isolation (Primack et al., 2017). Even though connecting through these technologies may not be as beneficial as connecting in person, there are some situations in which personal interaction is not possible. For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic, social isolation impacted university students, who were affected by the lack of personal interaction, as well as decreased motivation, and increased anxiety, boredom and loneliness (Leal Filho et al., 2021).

Few studies on university students’ communication patterns have been previously conducted in Chile, considering particularities such as that university students commonly live at home with their parents during their studies (e.g., 68% of the participants in the current study, while 48% of college students lived at home in the US in 2015 (GoodCall, 2021)) and that no on-campus housing exists. This paper aims to understand communication preferences for these students, and understand whether they can use a persuasive system to help them maintain their social ties.

Persuasive technology for communication

Persuasive technologies have been developed and studied mainly in two areas: health promotion and disease management, generally focusing on behavior change, attitude, motivation, and awareness. Persuasive technologies have been proposed in other domains as well, e.g., educational settings (Mintz & Aagaard, 2012). Some persuasive technologies have been proposed to support or encourage communication practices, mainly to support older adults’ social interactions through virtual agents acting as companionship, encouraging participation in social activities (Vargheese et al., 2016).

Gamification refers to the intentional use of methods inspired by game techniques to engage and influence attention, behaviors and motivation in non-game activities or environments (Krath & von Korflesch, 2021). Gamification is part of persuasive systems, using goals as rewards as part of the persuasive techniques (Krath & von Korflesch, 2021). Gamification has been applied with a focus on communication practices to connect users for social interaction in areas such as sustainability, education and fitness (Krath & von Korflesch, 2021). Using gamification to improve communication skills for social interaction has revealed that people are interested in improving themselves and increasing bonding with friends (Hori et al., 2013; Seaborn & Fels, 2015). Previous research shows a potential gap in investigating gamification to support communication practices, especially with close social ties.

There is concern about the communication habits of young adults in terms of their excessive use of smartphones and social media platforms. There is evidence, e.g., of a relation between social media addiction and decreased mental health and academic performance (Hou et al., 2019). Some applications incorporate persuasive design principles that increase smartphone use and addictive behaviors (Chen, 2021). There is therefore a fine line between persuasive systems and digital addiction (Cemiloglu et al., 2021). The goal of the present work is to persuade university students who might be feeling disconnected from their support networks to keep in touch with them, but we acknowledge that this goal requires treading carefully since increasing smartphone use overall may be associated with negative effects such as smartphone and social media overuse or addiction.

Materials and methods

This section describes the students who participated in the study, as well as the instruments that were used to learn about student communication preferences. The study was approved by the Ethics Committee at Universidad Católica de la Santísima Concepción (code VRIP 08).

Results

Participants were asked to state the frequency of communication with each of their contact types, i.e., how often they communicated with their friends through each medium. Therefore, participants may have responded e.g., that they communicate through phone calls daily with their significant others, and weekly with their parents. Table 1 displays the number of students who interact with their social network, and the self-reported frequency of communication using each communication tool. Only the highest frequency is considered for each communication tool—i.e., in the previous example, the participant would be considered as using phone calls daily (and not once a week).

WhatsApp is used by 87.8% (79/90) of participants daily and by 90.0% (81/90) at least once a week. Phone calls are used by 87.8% (79/90) of participants at least once a week, followed by Facebook (73.3%, 66/90), Facebook Messenger (68.9%, 62/90), and Instagram (53.3%, 48/90). Twitter, Snapchat, and SMSs, are used less often—they are never used, or used less than once a week, by 90.0% (81/90), 98.9% (89/90), and 85.6% (77/90) of participants respectively. Other communication tools, e.g., Telegram and Tinder, were reported as used by very few participants (86.7%, 78/90, did not report using any other communication tool).

We also studied whether communication tools use differs when considering relationship, i.e., whether some tools are used most often for some types of relationships than others. Overall, considering participants that stated they communicated at least once a week, 96.7% (87/90) of participants stated they communicated with their friends, 83.3% (75/90) with relatives and 65.6% (59/90) with parents. The rest of the categories all had less than 35% of respondents. Table 2 shows the communication tools participants use for each relationship type. In this case, if a participant e.g., uses SMS and WhatsApp to communicate with their significant other, they will appear in both categories (so neither columns nor rows add up to the number of participants). Here, we can see that phone calls are the preferred medium when talking to parents, but WhatsApp is more often used to talk to relatives or friends.

Discussion

The survey about communication preferences sought to understand university students’ communication preferences. The questionnaire was answered by 90 students of the Computer Science Engineering program.

The results of this survey are well aligned with previous research of social media use in Chile (e.g., Poushter, Bishop & Chwe, 2018; Gómez-Urrutia & Tello-Navarro, 2020)—the most popular communication tools are WhatsApp and Facebook—although a large number of students also talk on the phone, which has generally been declining in popularity as a communication method when compared to text. This may be because texting is preferred to maintain constant contact, while calling offers a more personal and detailed interaction (Markham et al., 2017). We also found that, similarly to previous studies (e.g., Russo et al., 2014), communication method depends on social tie: e.g., the most frequent way to talk to their parents were phone calls, while the most frequent communication tool for friends was WhatsApp.

This survey has some limitations we would like to acknowledge. First, the participants of the study were only from one specific program at one specific university, and as such, results are not generalizable to other populations. It is important to note that the ratio of men to women respondents was 5 men per each woman. Furthermore, the data was self-reported, so it may incorporate biases and inaccuracies. Finally, the data is only quantitative and as such, cannot uncover motivations or explanations for why each communication method is used.

Social+Me: Definition of Persuasive Strategies and Communication Tools

To develop the application, we started by defining the persuasive strategies, based on a recent survey of persuasive technologies for health and wellness (Orji & Moffatt, 2018), a review of existing applications available in the Google Play store (7 Weeks, 2019; Familyar, 2019; PhoneWatcher, 2019), and previous experience in the development of persuasive applications (Bascur et al., 2018). From this analysis, we chose six persuasive strategies to incorporate into our application. These strategies are: (1) tracking/monitoring users, (2) social support and sharing, (3) the use of messages and reminders, (4) goals, (5) images, and (6) feedback in visual, audio and text form.

We used the metaphor of a tree in a field, which we had used previously (Bascur et al., 2018; Rossel et al., 2019), to organize the persuasive strategies in an understandable and coherent way. A similar concept (using a garden) was used for Ubifit Garden (Consolvo et al., 2008), and similar ideas have been used previously with positive results (Oyebode, Maurya & Orji, 2020). In our case, the images in the metaphor change according to the progress of each user. This progress has a direct relation with the amount of communication that users establish through their mobile devices with their social network.

To define which communication tools would be included in the final persuasive application, we considered the survey presented in Section Understanding University Students’ Communication Preferences, which found that the most popular tools (considering weekly use) among university students in order of decreasing popularity were WhatsApp, phone calls, Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, SMS, Twitter and Snapchat (Table 3). Due to Facebook and Instagam API authorization limitations, we were not able to include them in the application, and since Snapchat only was used by 1.1% (1/90) of the users, it was not included as well. Therefore, the application includes the rest of the communication tools –i.e., calls, WhatsApp, SMS and Twitter.

Social+Me: metaphor and social aspects

The main element of the application is the metaphor of a tree in a field (Fig. 2). As the user interacts more with their social network (the tracking/monitoring users persuasive strategy), a greater number of elements are added to the tree (the images persuasive strategy).

To start using Social+Me, the user must grant the application permission to access Twitter and phone data, and then select their closest contacts, whose communication will be monitored by the app. Then, for each contact, additional information is requested (e.g., Twitter handle). The selected contacts will appear in the “friends” tab, as shown in Fig. 2.

The application provides information about the number of daily interactions the user had with their social network (the feedback in visual, audio and text form persuasive strategy), which is shown in Fig. 3. It also provides a social aspect, as if a friend has the Social+Me application, an eye-shaped icon appears next to their information, allowing the user to see the friend’s progress in the metaphor window view (the social support and sharing persuasive strategy).

The application provides 15 goals, or achievements, for users to reach (Fig. 3). These achievements are represented as parts of the landscape. As a user increases their communication with their social network, new elements are added (the goals persuasive strategy). Each new achievement is unlocked when the user interacts seven times in one day with users in their contact list. For instance, a user with 16 interactions in one day will earn two achievements (⌊16/7⌋ = 2). The next day, the interaction counter restarts, so they will need seven new interactions to earn their next achievement. If a user interacts 6 or less times in one day, they will lose one of their previously earned achievements.

Notifications

The application implements non-diverse notifications (Kocielnik & Hsieh, 2017) for the users (the the use of messages and reminders persuasive strategy). Non-diverse notifications direct the attention of the users towards the metaphor, through simple and straightforward messages. The notifications were divided into two groups: internal and external. The internal notifications are those that are shown to users when they are using the application, and the external ones are those that are shown to users when the application is running as a background service. There are 13 different notifications and they are presented randomly to users. Two internal and two external notifications are shown in Fig. 4.

Materials and methods

This section describes the study participants, as well as the methods used to gather data during the evaluation. This study was approved by the Universidad Católica de la Santísima Concepción Ethics Committee (code VRIP 08).

Social+Me usability

The average SUS score given to the application was 85 (excellent) (Bangor, Kortum & Miller, 2009). All SUS scores were over 75, so all users considered that the usability was good (Lewis & Sauro, 2009). In the SSQ questionnaire, we obtained an average score of 4.5(out of 5).

Participants were asked to comment on positive and negative aspects about the application itself. They felt that Social+Me was easy and attractive to use, and that the tabs helped understand locked and unlocked achievements. One participant stated, “The design of the tree in a field metaphor, the logo of the application, and the colours used were attractive to me”.

Social+Me persuasion

The average number of recorded interactions was 11.8/day. Three of the participants obtained more than ten achievements in seven days, while three ended the seven days without achievements (either because they did not interact often enough or because they stopped interacting and lost their achievements). Figure 5 shows the achievements each participant obtained as well as their trajectory throughout the seven days. The number of interactions per day are shown in Fig. 6.

Participants were asked whether they felt that the application helped them increase their digital communication. Some users commented that Social+Me helped them increase their communication with their social network and recognize their communication levels. One participant said, “For me, Social+Me was a daily communication challenge with my friends who are far away”. Another one said, “The application itself is good; the goal seems important and necessary for anyone who feels a lack of communication with their environment”. Some participants stated that the persuasive aspects of the interface motivated them, e.g., wanting to complete the landscape with their achievements. One participant stated “It was very motivating to have the achievements section. I felt like it was a game, with me trying to unlock every achievement. That helped me stay connected”.

Discussion

The design of the Social+Me application aims to promote sustained communication practices between young adults and their closest networks (family members and friends) using technology, providing young adults support and reducing isolation. The application was found to have good usability. Some users also found the metaphor engaging, and they felt that the application persuaded them to maintain communication.

The participants in this initial evaluation were only seven, and the application was only used for seven days, so it is not possible to extrapolate any findings to larger populations or periods of time. However, it is interesting to note that two participants increased their communication during the period (P1, P5), and five maintained their communication within their initial range, with certain fluctuations. Of those participants, four started at a medium or low level of interaction (P2, P3, P4, P6) and one started at a very low level of interaction (P7). Since we did not have a previous period with no intervention to compare with, we cannot be certain whether the application affected communication levels, e.g., it is possible that those participants with steady medium levels of interaction had previously much higher or lower interaction levels. If we analyze Fig. 5, we can see that participants P2 and P4 did have a steady progress towards gaining achievements. When combined with the participant comments, we can infer that the application did persuade some of the participants to increase their communication, though naturally, not all of them, since we did not measure whether participants were receptive to the idea of increasing their communication, as is suggested in these types of studies (Fogg, 2009). If this application was to be tested for a longer period and a wider audience, some design decisions should be reconsidered, e.g., the number of interactions to earn achievements, which was defined arbitrarily as seven and should be tailored to previous activity levels. For example, for participant P7, who seems to interact infrequently, the threshold to begin gaining achievements should be lower, while for participant P1, who earned all 15 achievements by the fifth day, the threshold should be higher or more achievements should be available.

One of the goals of the Social+Me application was to decrease isolation—which can affect students as well as affect their learning at university (Lim & Vighnarajah, 2018)—and persuade users to keep in touch with their support networks. The use of persuasive mechanisms has been applied in online social networks for many years (Weiksner, Fogg & Liu, 2008), for several purposes, e.g., marketing (Weiger, Hammerschmidt & Wetzel, 2018). However, there are also persuasive design characteristics inserted into social media itself to entice users to keep using it, and these do not consider user objectives, time constraints, relationships and mental wellness (Bedjaoui, Elouali & Benslimane, 2018). Our study is innovative in that it aims to increase the use of smartphone communication to decrease isolation—i.e., to purposefully engage students with their support networks—and that the participants are aware of this goal.

Although the goal itself may be positive, the persuasive use of technology may be perceived as a problematic or addictive (Lopez-Fernandez et al., 2017; Panova & Carbonell, 2018). From the beginning of their development, researchers have discussed the ethics of persuasive technology; similarly, now the interactive design community has been focus of criticism for its role in the emergence of dark patterns (Rogers et al., 2021), or subtle interface tricks that make users do things they do not want to do. One straightforward “golden” rule of persuasive technology is that it should not persuade someone of something the creators would not want to be persuaded of themselves (Berdichevsky & Neuenschwander, 1999). Similarly, others have stated that persuasive applications are ethical if they influence others of behavior that users would have held as goals themselves (Timmer, Kool & van Est, 2015). However, in 2009, a review of papers published in a persuasive systems conference found that ethics were often unaddressed in research studies (Torning & Oinas-Kukkonen, 2009). We would like to acknowledge that our study does present ethical issues. While our goal is to encourage students to keep in touch with their networks, excessive social media use and fear of missing out are related to serious issues such as smartphone addiction (Gezgin, 2018), so further work should be careful to balance improving communication and preventing excessive smartphone use.

This study has several limitations we would like to acknowledge. First, the study was only carried out for a short period of time and did not compare previous communication patterns to those while using the application. Second, the study had only seven participants, and they were not necessarily interested in improving their communication patterns nor suffering from isolation. Furthermore, the participants may have had positive biases, since they were recruited through snowball sampling from one researcher. For these reasons, the study is preliminary and although the results are promising, we are not able to make claims about longer term issues such as persuasion, adoption, or excessive use of the application. We would also like to conduct more in-depth qualitative evaluation to further understand the motivations behind the use of the application, as well as a longer term quantitative study that allows us to study the issues of persuasion and overuse with more depth. We recognize as well self-report limitations, particularly the potential influence of Social Desirability Bias (SDB); although we used validated surveys for our study (SUS, Digital skills and SSQ) at this preliminary evaluation of Social+Me we did not include SDB mitigation techniques (Kwak, Ma & Kim, 2021; Durmaz, Dursun & Kabadayi, 2020).