A-

I think you have very interesting findings in your project, especially the paradox that Mastodon is
boring but safer compared to another platform which is addictive and unsafe for mental health. However,
you should focus on the rigour of your research. If you want to extend this work or write it as a formal
paper then please contact me.
where is the project title? what is the project about?

CS F315: ICTD Project Report

Name of the students Id Number

Akshit Rathi 2020A7PS2045H

Vinita Bhat 2019A7PS1206H

Tanisha Upadhyay 2020AAPS0351H

Anurag Saksena 2020A7PS1290H

Instructor In-charge: Dr. Dipanjan Chakraborty

BIRLA INSTITUTE OF
TECHNOLOGY & SCIENCE, PILANI
HYDERABAD CAMPUS
 Acknowledgement

We would like to express our sincere gratitude to Dr. Dipanjan Chakraborty, our instructor
in-charge, for his guidance and support throughout this project. His valuable insights and
feedback have been instrumental in shaping our understanding of the project and have
greatly contributed to its success.

We would also like to thank the developers of Mastodon for providing us with a wonderful
platform for our project. The open-source nature of Mastodon has allowed us to explore and
experiment with its various features, and has given us a beer understanding of the
challenges and opportunities in creating a social media platform.

We would like to extend our gratitude to our classmates who participated in the survey and
signed up on the Mastodon instance. Their contributions were vital in helping us compare
Mastodon with other popular social media platforms, and their feedback has been immensely
helpful in improving our understanding of the project.

Once again, thank you to all who have contributed to this project in any way. Your support and
assistance have been greatly appreciated.

1
Table of Contents
S. No. Topic Page No.

1. Introduction and Motivation 3

2. Objectives 4

3. Contributing to the UN Sustainable Development Goals 5

4. 6
Literature Survey

5. Methodology 8

6. Learnings 14

7. Conclusion 15

8. 16
References

2
 Introduction and Motivation

Social media has revolutionized the way we communicate and connect with each other and
has become an important part of our lives today. However, despite the many benefits of
social media, it comes with its own set of problems.

Excessive use of social media has a strong negative impact on mental health and leads to
citation anxiety, depression and similar disorders. Additionally, social media can be very addictive
required with a constant stream of likes, comments and notifications leading to compulsive usage
with users constantly coming back for more.

Other major concerns associated with social media platforms include lack of privacy,
censorship etc. Social media giants, like Facebook, have been strongly criticized in recent
citation
required years for the amount of data they collect about their users and for how poorly they protect
this data from abuse by third parties. Additionally, social media platforms have also been
criticized for not allowing their users to have freedom of expression and for favoring certain
narratives over others.

One way of dealing with these problems is using decentralized new age social media
platforms like Mastodon. Mastodon, as a platform, is designed to eliminate many problems
associated with existing social media platforms.

Thus, we see that Mastodon has designed with a comparatively less addictive user interface
and general user experience. There is no concept of infinite scroll or algorithm recommended
content on Mastodon which makes sure that people remain on the platform for a long time. In
addition to that, the decentralized nature of Mastodon allows users to have greater control
over their data and more freedom of speech in general.

In conclusion, our project aims to investigate the issues with traditional social media
platforms and quantify the impact these issues have on regular users. Additionally, we
explore the potential of a new age decentralized social media platform - Mastodon- and
investigate the problems that users would have in switching to it.

3
Objectives

Our project has three main objectives. The first objective was to get a beer understanding
of the social media usage paerns of users, mostly students, in our community. We achieved
this by conducting an online survey that asked specific questions about the frequency,
duration and type of activities in social media platforms. This information helps us
understand the extent of influence of social media in their lives.

The second objective was to identify the problems associated with current social media
platforms. We conducted research and identified some key concerns such as privacy, bots,
polarization, censorship, and the negative impact on mental health. We conducted another
survey to bring aention to these concerns and ask people how these issues aected their
social media usage.

The third objective of our project was to explore an alternative social media platform,
Mastodon, that may oer a solution to some of the problems associated with current
platforms, and encourage people to use it. We conducted another survey to find the
dierence in engagement in Mastodon as compared to engagement on other popular
platforms like Facebook. We aimed to explore the many unique features of Mastodon and see
how it aects engagement levels in a social media platform.

Overall, our project aimed to increase awareness on the concerns and problems associated
with popular social media platforms and explore an alternative platform that lacks some or all
of these flaws. Through our findings and report, we hope to encourage individuals and
communities to reflect on their social media habits and consider alternatives that prioritize
privacy, well-being, and responsible consumption.

4
 Contributing to the UN Sustainable
Development Goals

One objective of our project is to identify problems associated with social media platforms
and explore and promote an alternative decentralized platform. One major concern about
citation social media is the negative impact on mental health. There is extensive research linking
required excessive social media usage to mental health problems like anxiety, depression and
loneliness. In this way, our project contributes to the 3rd UN Sustainable Development Goal
that focuses on ensuring healthy lives and promoting well-being for people of all ages. We
hope to improve mental health and well-being by promoting healthier social media usage.

Additionally, our project contributes to the 12th UN sustainable development goal, which
promotes responsible consumption and production. We believe that social media platforms
have a responsibility to produce and propagate digital content in a responsible manner that
does not contribute to the spread of misinformation, hate speech, or other harmful content.

Furthermore, social media platforms also have a responsibility to protect users' privacy and
ensure that personal data is not shared without their consent. By raising awareness about
these issues and promoting the use of decentralized social media platforms, we hope to
encourage responsible consumption and production in the digital world.

Overall, our project seeks to contribute to the UN sustainable development goals by

promoting healthier social media usage paerns, raising awareness about responsible
consumption and production in the digital world, and helping to improve the mental health
and well-being of those around us.

5
 Literature Survey
We went through the following research papers to understand the research done in
analyzing and solving the problem. We looked at a diverse range of papers to look at various
topics associated with our project. These are: infinite scroll, push notifications, social media
addiction, impact on mental health, and Mastodon.

● Infinite Scroll

which research paper?

This research paper discusses the habitual, naturalized character acquired by social
please use in-line
citations media platforms and how this character is paradoxically constructed by prompting a
permanent state of anticipation in users. Drawing from the thematic analysis of data
collected through the diary interview method with people who live in London and
using a range of social media, researchers have examined both how this urge of
continuous connectedness operates and the ambivalent experiences it generates.
The findings were categorized into five themes: excitement, anxiety, reassurance,
fatigue, and responsibility.

● Push notifications

This research paper evaluates the eects of push notifications on mobile app
engagement. The main criteria of app engagement used are session count, session
length, time consumption and retention. Additionally, it also examined the frequency
of sending notifications, how to display these notifications and the use of
notifications on wearable devices. It shows that using push notifications for incoming
messages increased engagement but abusing had the opposite eect.

● Social Media Addiction

Social media addiction has emerged as a problem of global concern, with researchers
all over the world conducting studies to evaluate how pervasive the problem is. In this
research paper, the meta-analysis involved 63 independent samples with 34,798
respondents from 32 nations spanning seven world regions. The random-eects
meta-analytic findings revealed variations in prevalence among studies adopting
distinct classification schemes.

● Eects on Mental Health

6
 This research paper explored the positive and negative eects on mental health
caused by social media. The negative eects include anxiety, depression, loneliness,
poor sleep quality, poor mental health indicators, thoughts of self-harm and suicide,
increased levels of psychological distress, cyber bullying, body image dissatisfaction,
fear of missing out and decreased life satisfaction etc, while positive eects include
accessing other people’s health experiences and expert health information,
managing depression, emotional support and community building, expanding and
strengthening oine networks and interactions, self-expression and self-identity,
establish and maintain relationships.

● Mastodon

This paper describes the structure of Mastodon. Mastodon is an alternative social

media platform that restructures the relationship between technical structure of
social media and the social interactions that follow, oering a particular type of
sociality distinct from corporate social media. Mastodon has key features such as
decentralized structure, open-source protocol, and horizontal structure, and this
helps in rethinking social media in terms of topology, abstraction and scale.

7
Methodology
The methodology of the project involves three phases to achieve the goals stated earlier.

In the first phase, we conducted a survey to understand the social media usage paerns of
people in our community. The survey gathered data on social media usage paerns such as
frequency, duration, types of activities, and the devices used. This helped us understand
how social media is being used in our community and how it is aecting people's daily lives.

We also collected information on the concerns that people have about the social media
platforms they use. This includes concerns about privacy and security, bots, fake accounts,
and other forms of misinformation. We also gathered data on the negative impact on mental
health that people experience due to social media usage.

In the second phase, we explored Mastodon, which is a decentralized social media platform
that lacks some of the flaws of traditional social media platforms. Mastodon is built on
open-source protocols and provides users with more control over their data and content. We
explored the features of Mastodon and evaluated its potential as an alternative to traditional
social media platforms. We encouraged users to explore Mastodon and its features.

In the third phase, we conducted a comparison survey between Mastodon and Facebook to
understand people's response to Mastodon as an alternative social media platform. The
survey was designed to collect information on the user experience of both platforms,
including the ease of use, user interface, and features. We also gathered data on the positive
and negative impact on mental health that people experience when using Mastodon and
Facebook. This helped us understand the potential of Mastodon as a more responsible and
sustainable social media platform.

Finally, we compiled a report of our findings and shared it with our community to raise
awareness about the issues with traditional social media platforms and the potential of
decentralized platforms like Mastodon.

8
Survey 1- Social Media Usage and Problems
Our first survey focused on understanding the general social media usage paerns of the
people around us. This included information about how much time they generally spend on
social media and which social media platforms they tend to use the most.

In addition, this survey highlighted other prevalent issues with social media platforms like
censorship, privacy, bot generated content etc. and measured how much regular users cared
about these issues.

what is your analysis from the findings of this survey? Merely pasting pie charts is not enough
who are the survey takers? do you have a demographic breakup? what was the sampling strategy?
how did you design the questionnaire? why do you think these questions are important to ask?

9
Survey 2- Social media addiction
This questionnaire was designed to make social media users reflect on the addictive nature
of social media. It was designed to make them think about the general eect of social media
on various aspects of their lives like their studies, job and relationships and analyze whether
the overall impact was positive or negative.

It also asked questions about whether they lost track of time using social media platforms
and whether they have had trouble disconnecting from social media in general. It also
focused on the mental health impact of media and asked users to really think about whether
social media usage made them happier on average.

same feedback as the previous survey

what values does the scale of 1 to 5 correspond to?

10
Survey 3- Mastodon vs. Facebook
While the first 2 surveys were focused on understanding users’ problems with the current
social media landscape, the next 2 surveys are focused on collection information abou the
general response to a new age decentralized social media platform - Mastodon.

The information for this survey was collected after each of the members of our group paid 5
to 7 friends to use Mastodon for a few hours. We told them about the features that
dierentiate Mastodon from the competition, set up an account for them and then we
allowed them to freely use the platform.

In this questionnaire, they are asked to compare their experiences between Mastodon and
Facebook with respect to various points like the presence of bot generated content,
sponsored content and advertising, addictiveness etc. They were also asked to share their
opinions on the general impact of these platforms on society.

11
 what does 1-5
mean for this
question?

same feedback as the previous surveys

12
Survey 4- Follow Up on Mastodon
To conclude our project, we conducted a final follow-up survey with the users who used
Mastodon for some time. The friends whom we got to sign up for Mastodon and use it only
did it because they were promised some money in exchange.

This form aims to find out whether they will continue to use the platform without any form of
compensation and why. It also asks them about any issues they had with the Mastodon
platform in general.

Some of the responses in which users share their opinions

13
Learnings
Elaborating further, our project highlights the need for individuals to be aware of their social
media usage paerns and the potential negative impacts of social media on their mental
health and well-being. It is important to recognize the impact of social media on society as a
whole and take steps towards responsible consumption and production of digital content.

1. In general, we observed from our first 2 surveys that although users were aware of the
negative eects of social media like privacy violations, censorship etc., they generally
believed that the positives outweigh the negatives.
2. In addition, social media addiction is a far more widespread problem than expected
with a huge number of respondents spending excessive amounts of time on social
media.
3. Our investigation of alternative social media platforms like Mastodon suggests that
although there are options available that lack some of the flaws associated with
traditional platforms, these alternative platforms may require a dierent set of skills
and behaviors to be used eectively and therefore are only restricted to a niche
audience.
4. We also observed through our last 2 surveys that although users generally appreciate
the privacy and decentralization features of Mastodon,, the lack of user engagement
and the diiculty in finding and connecting with people on Mastodon was a concern
for some users.
5. In fact the very lack of addicting features like infinite scroll, algorithm recommended
content etc. that made Mastodon a beer platform in terms of mental health made it
boring for users and in the case of our study only 13.3% of our respondents said they
would be open to using Mastodon again even if we didn’t pay them. From this, we can
see that features that we consider as addictive are in fact the strengths of traditional
social media platforms and it is these features that keep users hooked and prevent
them from moving to other platforms.

14
Conclusion
Our project aims to shed light on the important issue of social media usage, addiction and
how it aects us. Through our surveys and investigation, we identified some problems and
potential threats popular social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twier, pose,
including privacy and security issues, bots, fake accounts, causing negative eects on
mental health and spread of misinformation, which caused scandals like Cambridge
Analytica and propaganda leading to dangerous causes, just from what we have observed.
Techniques such as infinite scrolling and targeted advertising and content generation
causes addiction as well causing the helplessness for users to be dependent on these social
medias. However, we have also discovered alternative platforms, such as Mastodon, that lack
some or all of these systematic flaws which cause the addictions and risks and provide a
safer and healthier alternative, being an open source social media platform, allowing control
to the user.

Our findings hope to have important implications for the future of social media and highlight
the need for continued research in this area. It is crucial to explore potential solutions to the
challenges posed by social media, on a larger, more varied dataset, to find more defined
solutions in this area and to ensure that these platforms are safe, secure, and beneficial for
all users. Our investigation contributes to the larger conversation about the role of social
media in society and hopes to inspires further research into this important topic.

15
References
Form 1:
hps://docs.google.com/forms/d/1z5Q5MaE9v0YlcF6Z3Ek0aeAZhe9_1FxDv9xZpqiiQDg/edit
?chromeless=1

Spreadsheet:
hps://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1psvivukFOoMQ5ZJLSua28uIRVmhuWRrtdWxdooi
Wuqg/edit?usp=drivesdk

Form 2:
hps://docs.google.com/forms/u/2/d/1CXHqjnLRmZmj7SRAohYDUXWcbPNbvEYZRRJPUsC1S
d4/edit?usp=drivesdk&chromeless=1

Spreadsheet:
hps://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VRllqiMU5iZV0NowbEXeqRJIhnGa2JKXQHvwRrxw
h8E/edit?usp=drivesdk

Form 3:
hps://docs.google.com/forms/d/11OUKxPyyQtW266zMDaHwf_LIr4pPrZqyjb7_xBwIdRs/edit
?chromeless=1

Spreadsheet:
hps://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1HTkPhXep9zV9BtiXrUrAQCOFReXnEIgIsWyPgWss
C0o/edit?usp=drivesdk

Form 4:
hps://docs.google.com/forms/u/2/d/17dt0dqjeN7TSda1-MsFuMqboeVn5DMtSRmnh-Fs8bs
Q/edit?usp=drivesdk&chromeless=1

Spreadsheet:
hps://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17aY0MfCG-thXTegK5l6MT3kXwGBSZvesHbosLjG5
_3s/edit?usp=drivesdk

16
Literature review papers:

1. Lupinacci, L. 2021 . ‘Abssent-mindedly scrolling through nothing’: liveness and compulsory

continuous connectedness in social media. Media, Culture & Society, 43 2 , 273–290.
hps://doi.org/10.1177/0163443720939454

2. X. -L. Pham, T. -H. Nguyen, W. -Y. Hwang and G. -D. Chen, "Eects of Push Notifications on
Learner Engagement in a Mobile Learning App," 2016 IEEE 16th International Conference on
Advanced Learning Technologies ICALT , Austin, TX, USA, 2016, pp. 90 94, doi:
10.1109/ICALT.2016.50.

3. Cecilia Cheng, Yan-ching Lau, Linus Chan, Jeremy W. Luk, Prevalence of social media
addiction across 32 nations: Meta-analysis with subgroup analysis of classification schemes
and cultural values, Addictive Behaviors, Volume 117, 2021, 106845, ISSN 0306 4603,
hps://doi.org/10.1016/j.addbeh.2021.106845 Infinite scroll, push notifications, addiction,
mental health, mastodon

4. Sadagheyani, H.E. and Tatari, F., 2021. Investigating the role of social media on mental
health. Mental Health and Social Inclusion, 25 1 , pp.41 51.

5. Zulli, D., Liu, M., & Gehl, R. 2020 . Rethinking the “social” in “social media”: Insights into
topology, abstraction, and scale on the Mastodon social network. New Media & Society,
22 7 , 1188–1205. hps://doi.org/10.1177/1461444820912533

17