Does engaging with societal problems in social places drive out the participants?

danah boyd has a brief post from a few years ago that argues that although teens continue to use email, “it is dead in the sense that it is no longer a site of deep emotional passion.” Email holds no special resonance because it is associated with school correspondence, spam, and other socially meaningless communication. Similarly, people don’t get excited about snail mail anymore because that’s where junk mail and bills come in – not exactly the highlight of your day.

So, if communication methods can “die” due to the introduction of necessary, but non-social, content, what does that mean for the socially conscious technologists who are attempting to leverage the popularity of mobile phones to promote goals like literacy and health? Will they risk driving out the very constituency they sought to reach?

Take South Africa’s popular MXit mobile chat application: 13 million people (mostly youth) use MXit to chat amongst themselves on the social networking service. A number of people are attempting to reach teens through MXit and promote typical development goals. Will MXit become as dead as email to these kids?

Not necessarily. In her study of South African teens’ use of MXit, Tanja Bosch noted that much of the use is “for peer support, to receive or give advice to others.” Even more to the point, when one researcher started a math tutorial program, Doctor Maths, he found success:

“Researchers found that the youth who participated (their sample was limited to one high school) were surprised to find that they could use their phones “as a tool instead of a toy or convenience”, and found that learners developed a social relationship with the anonymous Dr. Maths, often logging just to say hello, or ask for counseling, even though tutors were prohibited from asking or answering personal questions (Butgereit 2007).”

However, I think social mobile technologists need to be conscious of the risk. Two principles I think are important are

1. To remain socially aware: engaging with social media means that your project is in a social place that has nuanced norms of its own; observe, adapt and respect these.
2. To pull users desires, not push development goals: you need to attract users on their own terms. Spam killed email because it is unwanted. Electrical bills did the same to snail mail. The target audience will leave for new social areas if they are receiving unwanted content. If someone convinced MXit to send every user a public service announcement, it would be the wrong model. Users should be able to opt-in, and the personal benefits should be obvious – not long-term, amorphous goals.