Confidence & Control: Examining Adolescent Preferences for Technologies that Promote Wellness

Our work contributes to the growing body of CSCW research examining how technology can encourage wellness. In a 10-week participatory design study, we examined how technology can help teens overcome intra-personal and social barriers to healthy eating and positive relationships (the wellness topics of greatest interest to our participants). Our findings revealed teens' desire for expressive technology that helps them initiate dialogue, negotiate conflicts, and restrict communication with family, and their desired degree of engagement with tools promoting healthy eating (passively to actively involved in behavior change). Our analysis further yielded crosscutting themes: the importance of examining issues of self-efficacy, locus of control, and socio-ecological context in the design of health technology. We use our findings to contribute new directions for CSCW research: developing a nuanced perspective on the psychology of change, designing for varying levels of self-efficacy and locus of control, and problematizing the persuasive technology research agenda.

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