Hokie Wellness marks one year of evidence-based digital wellness programming

Program metrics show impacts in student productivity.

Margaret Kovick

13 Mar 2024

A person facing away points with their thumbs to the back of the tee shirt they are wearing, which reads, "Do more things that make you forget to check your phone. - Joy of Missing Out" — A student shows off a T-shirt earned for completing a Hokie Wellness digital well-being challenge. Photo by Max Catalano for Virginia Tech.

This spring, Virginia Tech celebrates its one-year anniversary as a Certified Digitally Well University in true academic style: with data.

The certification was awarded by the Digital Wellness Institute for Hokie Wellness’ proactive approach to digital well-being. Over the past year, Laurie Fritsch, assistant director of Hokie Wellness, has spearheaded evidence-based programs to empower students to engage with their digital devices in a way that maximizes their quality of life.

Weekly steps to digital wellness

Fritsch has worked with Christina Crook, author of “The Joy of Missing Out: Finding Balance in a Wired World,” to create a JOMO(Campus) campaign. The campaign presents fun and easy digital wellness opportunities to students, such as conversation cards placed in communal areas and weekly challenge prompts posted in residence halls.

The most immersive initiative is Fritsch’s 4-Week Digital Well-being Challenge. Participants complete pre-assessment and post-assessment surveys that analyze their digital wellness across eight areas of their overall well-being: productivity, mental health, physical health, communication, environment, digital citizenship, tech-enabled health, and relationships. The Digital Wellness Institute’s Digital Flourishing platform analyzes the assessments to summarize the user's degree of flourishing.

Each week, participants complete a short learning activity, adopt a challenge to optimize their tech use in relation to the eight areas of well-being, and write reflections on the experience.

Challenges are designed to fit into students’ lives without overwhelming them. A weekly challenge could be for students to turn off unnecessary notifications on their phones or to talk to five people. The program emphasizes intentionality over effort. The goal is for students to come away from the program with a sense of control over their digital wellness.

“When we ask students if they are using their time the way they want to be, for many, the answer is no,” Fritsch said. “Students aren't going to use their phone less all of the time, but we're all on the same page about using your device in a way that maximizes your life and minimizes where it's taking away from well-being."

Challenge results

The 4-Week Digital Well-being Challenge piloted in Hoge Hall in spring 2023 with 42 students. With support from DeAnna Katey, director of undergraduate student programs with the College of Engineering, the challenge expanded in fall 2023 to the Galileo and Hypatia engineering living-learning communities, garnering 618 responses.

While there were incremental improvements across the board in the fall group’s flourishing score breakdown, the largest improvements were concentrated in the productivity category:

Distraction: Students reporting going online for one purpose but becoming otherwise distracted decreased from 49 percent to 43 percent.
Procrastination: Students reporting that they use apps, social media, or games to procrastinate dropped from 67 percent to 56 percent.
Single tasking: Students reporting that they complete an intended task before working on something new increased from 39 percent to 44 percent.
Focus: Students reporting that they close distracting apps or use Do Not Disturb features when needing to focus on homework or a project increased from 39 percent to 44 percent.

The Digital Flourishing assessment showed Galileo and Hypatia participants valued productivity highest among the areas of digital well-being, with 40 percent wanting to improve their productivity.

A starting point for long-term change

As many current students have grown up alongside the internet, just opening a conversation around how their screens affect their lives can be powerful, said Fritsch.

After completing the four-week challenge, many students were impressed by the benefits they experienced, with almost 60 percent reporting they would be likely to continue their behavioral changes.

“They need to actually feel the benefits and be reminded of those benefits to stay motivated to continue their behavioral changes,” Fritsch said. “A lot of them said that reminding themselves of the benefits and what really matters to them helps them stay focused.”

The importance of community and environmental cues

Data from the successful first-year campaigns point toward effective factors to help students change behaviors.

“The most impactful things so far are consistency and accountability,” said Fritsch.

She said that students are most enthusiastic about changes that complement their day-to-day lives. A big part of these are environmental triggers: external reminders that encourage digital wellness practices or that normalize non-digital activities. Fritsch said that the most beneficial environment for change is one without excessive phone use.

"If the norm flips,” she said, “that's really what's going to make a longer lasting change.”