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No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. Social media have become an integral part of our lives, expanding our interlinking capabilities to new levels. There is plenty to be said about their positive effects. On the other hand, however, some serious negative implications of social media have been repeatedly highlighted in recent years, pointing at various threats to society and its more vulnerable members, such as teenagers, in particular, ranging from much-discussed problems such as digital addiction and polarization to manipulative influences of algorithms and further to more teenager-specific issues e.
The impact of social mediaβboth at an individual and societal levelβis characterized by the complex interplay between the users' interactions and the intelligent components of the platform. Thus, users' understanding of social media mechanisms plays a determinant role.
This Companion combines automatic processing with expert intervention and guidance. The virtual Companion will be powered by a Recommender System CWB-RS that will optimize a CWB metric instead of engagement or platform profit, which currently largely drives recommender systems thereby disregarding any societal collateral effect.
CWB-RS will optimize CWB both in the short term by balancing the level of social media threats the users are exposed to, and in the long term by adopting an Intelligent Tutor System role and enabling adaptive and personalized sequencing of playful learning activities. We put an emphasis on experts and educators in the educationally managed social media community of the Companion.
