GROUP SENIOR PROJECT :“Week of Unplug and Unwind” to Promote Mindful Young Adult Social Media Use

Overview

My fellow Psychology students and I collaborated on our senior project to host an initiative titled “The Week of Unplug and Unwind”. The aim was to encourage mindful social media use and perhaps protect against symptoms of social anxiety and loneliness that are associated with social media use.

Before hosting this week, my group completed a literature review examining the relationship between social media use and symptoms of social anxiety and loneliness. This informed the activities we planned for our week.

Each day of this week had a challenge related to social media use (setting time limits, unfollowing accounts that don’t enrich their feed) and a mindfulness journal prompt related to their social media use. To best reach our target population (young adults on social media), we made an Instagram promoting our week in hopes of disrupting the typical social media scroll.

During 3 of the week days, my group-mates and I presented our daily challenge, shared our literature review findings, and promoted our week in 4 Cal Poly Psychology classes and to one on campus organization.

Across our social media, class presentations, and club presentation, my group reached a total of 180 individuals with our project. 14 individuals officially participated in our week and its challenges. One lucky participant won a local coffee shop gift card (to hang out with a friend IRL) and a cool journal!

Above is the social media account managed by my group-mates and I. The graphics on this account were created using Canva.