With the evolution of technology and social media, humans as the social creatures we are, have grown in connectivity. The sheer average number of relationships an individual can maintain is at an all-time high! Unfortunately, this sometimes dilutes our special relationships, the relationships that we cannot live without. That is where GroupConnect comes in. GroupConnect is a private, invite-only social media platform where users can share their memories with their families and groups of close friends. GroupConnect allows families and friends to stay connected no matter where the journey of life takes you, from infancy to adulthood.

Joyfill is a social media application that cultivates happiness into people's lives by helping you evaluate and invest in joys with the people you care about. The goal is to create a space where users identify and discover what brings them joy. Joyfill sets up users for success to fulfill their joys by allowing them to manually enter and select as desired

Likewise’s goal is to help current and incoming students at the University of Washington find a safe space to express thoughts, feelings and concerns with their peers. Students can create posts, search for advice, and read past experiences from other students who have gone through the same or similar experiences. This allows them to get a glimpse of their perspectives and seek guidance from others. Through Likewise, students can connect with their peers and build a sense of community by sharing stories and advice.

Social media has negative effects on people’s emotions and social well-being by raising or reducing their self-awareness. We then designed a personal informatics tool, which is a usage report that guides users to learn about their posting activities and self-reflect. With the exact data extracted from users’ social media along with the data analysis we did, we could provide an easy, enjoyable, and heart-warming way for them to deeply self-reflect, including reminding them of their good memories and highlight moments, giving them numbers and visualizations, etc. Users can make adjustments accordingly to experience more positive social well-being.

Teen social media use and teen mental health struggles have been on the rise for many years. This correlation has created a great deal of concern but there has been little study into the content of teen social media information behavior. The Twitter accounts of 77 teens were analyzed for mental health related content finding that these teens were suffering significant stress in their daily lives, struggling with social relationships, turning to celebrities for advice and information, and that teens with an active focus for their social media information behavior were less likely to share mental health related posts.

#MyLibraryStory is a social media advocacy campaign that aims to promote user stories about library services and impact. The project arose from the observation that much of the social media conversation about libraries was centered on librarians, and it is an attempt to expand the sphere of that conversation to include non-librarian voices. The primary contribution of #MyLibraryStory is a series of 5 video interviews showcasing different user stories about how libraries have impacted the subjects’ lives. These videos were released throughout the month of May and shared to Twitter and Instagram.

Millions of people need a blood transfusion for lifesaving treatments each year. Yet, blood banks are often in short supply of blood due to a lack of donations. It is critical that there are enough resources available to provide patients with the care they deserve. Our project, BloodPact, empowers people to save lives through community, competition, and information. BloodPact is a web and text-messaging platform that gives new and returning blood donors the opportunity to join and compete across communities, set goals, earn rewards, and access important information about donation eligibility and blood drives.

Social media is addictive. Social media has the power to connect people all over the world. However, Studies have shown that social media impacts people’s lives negatively. Our project focused on creating a new social media platform that’s purpose is to prove that social media can be effective, meaningful, and impact mental health positively. Our platform on the idea of only being to use it for one minute a day, believing that by cutting down the viewing time, we can decrease addiction while also motivating users to post interesting content.

“Potentially Predatory Journals” (PPJs), or journals that may not adhere to proper academic peer-review, could give false credibility to questionable or pseudo-scientific papers. These potentially questionable papers can sometimes leak into the public via social networks, cherry-picking or emotionally charging results to further specific political/ideological causes. With the proliferation of “foreign information campaigns” (FICs), or state-backed disinformation operations, these social media posts are often amplified/distorted. The goal of this project is to investigate these two sources of science misinformation and lay the foundation for future work in this space.

Today’s technical landscape is constantly changing; in many ways this increased innovation is beneficial. However, continuous innovation also means practices and technological norms are changing at a fast pace. The majority of today’s youth are growing up with technology firmly integrated into their lives. We see it as our duty to educate kids on these potentially dangerous norms and practices they are at exposed to on a daily basis. PrivacyPal serves as a modernized education tool to meet these goals: protecting and empowering kids to create an informed and healthy relationship with technology.