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It’s a real buddy system.
A group of Long Island ninth graders won a highly competitive contest on making social media less harmful for teens by designing a “buddy bot” AI program to help with digital detoxing.
“It’s something that we’ve all experienced very firsthand,” said Chaminade’s Andrew Runje Dargento, part of the high school’s five-person winning squad.
“I’ve had days where my screen time is terrible — I don’t even want to say the number,” Andrew told The Post. “It’s something that I want to change for myself personally and change for the whole community around us.”
They were recently crowned champions of the “Medical Marvels” competition put on by Northwell’s Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research. It tasked more than 180 LI and New York City students with creating an approach to “lessen the negative impact of social media” on their peers.
Top politicians like Gov. Kathy Hochul have pushed this concept over harm concerns from teen-targeted algorithms.
“We found it best to use social media against social media,” team member Mateo Solis said of the project they developed from mid-December to February.
The first-year Chaminade students created the AI chatbot with a twist of being supportive to step away from the screen.
“It took about a week to code,” Christopher Covelli, the students’ designated tech guy who has been coding since age 10, said of his prized “buddy bot.”
“It’s a really easy system that identifies 400 plus keywords and has built-in responses to that.”
The interactive, ChatGPT-esque AI can provide social media-stressed users with positive reinforcement responses like “Remember to take deep breaths. You’re not alone,” when prompted.
“We have an idea of what works because it would work for us, ourselves, too,” added Solis.
Serious screen time
Rather than just inferring based on the team’s personal experiences, they surveyed nearly 350 Chaminade students on excessive social media use.
“About 60% of students reported that social media has negatively affected their sleep schedule and mental health,” said team member Ty Miranda.
Along with developing the “buddy bot” and writing a paper on social media’s effects on youth, the students plan to design a subsequent app with which the AI could pair. Outlining what it would do was a significant portion of their winning presentation.
“We really thought that to start attacking all these social media apps, you might as well start with an app itself,” Miranda added. “So we can engage the students with something they’re already doing without harming them.”
This to-be-developed “Media Mindful” app — the boys agreed to use the $1,800 first-place prize money to make it a reality — will work by creating a tiered system of incentives to avoid scrolling too much.
The ideal test drive would be at their Mineola Catholic school, where classes with the lowest screen time would win pizza parties.
“It’s like a competitive edge like you can get from video games,” Solis said.
As for the team itself, they’ve since practiced what they preached.
Miranda said he has been earnings grade of 100 on tests and papers since cutting back on phone usage, and Runje Dargento, whose parents keep on him about screen time, said he “hasn’t been getting yelled at” lately.
While Covelli boasted that he’s never gotten too sucked into social media, Solis also noticed the benefits that come with a breath of fresh air.
“I feel I have a lot more energy, and I actually gave up TikTok for Lent,” he said. “Sometimes my parents say ‘you seem a little bit happier today.’”
