The Impact of Gamified Social-Media Mobile Challenges on Mental Well-being

Mental well-being is an intangible, subjective perception of our own emotions and cognitive capabilities. With the rise of social networks, connectivity and media consumption have seen dramatic changes, and serious games have been applied in many different ways as an effective approach for improving mental well-being. In this work, we focus on understanding how mental well-being relates to people’s routines, what dangers and recommendations we should be aware of, and what opportunities exist to leverage current technologies in order to improve people’s lives. In this paper we present Spark, a mobile application where everyone in the world participates in a single challenge every 25 hours. Each challenge asks the user to perform an activity, capturing that moment with a photo, and then sharing it. As the user participates in different challenges over time, a record of the activities is always accessible. This encourages the user to relive positive past experiences, and take note of his accomplishments. We evaluated the tool during a six-month long study where participants ranked their weekly levels of mental well-being. The results suggest there is a positive impact of the gamified challenges in the overall perception of mental well-being.