Connecting, challenging, and empowering youth through their smartphone

Grow It! is a multiplayer serious gaming app for adolescents aged 12–25 years. Results of a study during 2 lockdowns in 2020 indicated the potential efficacy of an eHealth intervention on everyday well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic, with about 70% of participants slightly improving their daily mood while using the gaming app [1].

Prof. Manon Hillegers (Erasmus MC Sophia, the Netherlands) explained that the Grow It! app monitors thoughts and emotions in daily life using the Experience Sampling Method (ESM) to identify emotion profiles and increase self-insight. It offers daily cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT)-based challenges to promote adaptive coping, and provides motivating gaming elements. The process of developing an app like this was long and full of numerous small steps.

“You participate anonymously, you choose a nickname, and you play for a team of 5–8 adolescents,” explained Prof. Hillegers. “Together, you grow a tree. You compete with other teams and earn points by completing questionnaires on emotion (ESM), which enhance insight into emotion, and by completing daily challenges, which help you to cope with stress.”

The Grow It! app was about to be released when the COVID-19 crisis broke out, upon which the longitudinal Grow It! COVID-19 study was carried out to evaluate the app. There were 3,153 participants (75% girls, mean age 17.9 years) in 2 cohorts. The first cohort was recruited during the first lockdown around May 2020 (n=1,282), the second around the time of the second lockdown in December 2020 (n=1,871). The results showed that affective and cognitive well-being at an individual level increased in 41–53% of adolescents.

Prof. Hillegers offered the following take-home messages from the Grow It! COVID-19 study:

• Adolescents at high risk for mood disorders have a distinct emotional profile and can be identified.
• Adolescents want to share but prefer not to talk about emotions.
• Smartphones can be used to reach out and to offer help and feedback on emotions to adolescents.
• Developing and testing gamified eHealth tools in co-creation with youth will enhance insight into needs, motivation, and better preventive effects.

1. Hillegers MHJ. Connecting, challenging and empowering youth through their smartphone. S.21.02, ECNP 2021 Congress, 2–5 October.

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Posted on 26 November 2021