How to Cope with Social Media in High School

Background: Mental health is decreasing among young adults in Denmark and social media use plays a big role. There are no national guidelines or public health interventions targeted at the prevention of mental health challenges of young adults and previous minor interventions show no long-term effect. However, studies show that the scouting community experience less strain on their mental health and are better at navigating social media than their peers, due to a higher self-efficacy. In a previous study, we set out to develop a board game based on scouting skill development, aimed at young adults. This paper sets out to create a public health intervention integrating this board game.

Methods and data collection: Using Citizen Science-methods of co-creation and collaboration, citizen groups of high school student, school administration and scout leaders were included in interviews, workshops, design processes and data analysis to create a public health intervention meeting the needs of, as well as empowering, the stakeholders and considering barriers and facilitators in the implementation process.

Results: Through the collaborative process we found that main barriers for implementation were lack of time and resources and that an intervention targeted high school students should be implemented during the intro courses, when the students are allotted into their study programs. The intervention was developed to ease the implementation process and adjusted to meet the specific needs of the high school students and setting.

Conclusion: Citizen Science-methods showed a promising effect on empowering stakeholders and considering needs, barriers and facilitators in the intervention development phase and may help address the known challenges of implementing public health interventions. However, more work is needed before an intervention integrating the scouting skill development strategies is ready for pilot testing.