Long Island students design buddy bot that offers surprising twist in battle to make social media safer for kids

It’s a real buddy system.A group of Long Island ninth graders won a highly competitive contest on making social media less harmful for teens by designing a “buddy bot” AI program to help with digital detoxing.“It’s something that we’ve all experienced very firsthand,” said Chaminade’s Andrew Runje Dargento, part of the high school’s five-person winning squad.“I’ve had days where my screen time is terrible — I don’t even want to say the number,” Andrew told The Post.“It’s something that I want to change for myself personally and change for the whole community around us.”They were recently crowned champions of the “Medical Marvels” competition put on by Northwell’s Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research.

It tasked more than 180 LI and New York City students with creating an approach to “lessen the negative impact of social media” on their peers.Top politicians like Gov.Kathy Hochul have pushed this concept over harm concerns from teen-targeted algorithms.“We found it best to use social media against social media,” team member Mateo Solis said of the project they developed from mid-December to February.

The first-year Chaminade students created the AI chatbot with a twist of being supportive to step away from the screen.“It took about a week to code,” Christopher Covelli, the students’ designated tech guy who has been coding since age 10, said of his prized “buddy bot.”“It’s a really easy system that identifies 400 plus keywords and has built-in responses to that.” The interactive, ChatGPT-esque AI can provide social media-stressed users with positive reinforcement responses like “Remember to take deep breaths.You’re not alone,” when prompted.“We have an idea of what works because it would work for us, ourselves, too,” added Solis.Rather than just inferring based on the team’s personal experiences, they surveyed nearly 350 Chaminade students on excessive social media use.“About 60% of s...