Tell Me About It: Adolescent Self-Disclosure with an Online Robot for Mental Health

Self-disclosure to a social robot is a mental health intervention that can decrease stress for adolescents. Online digital robots provide the potential to scale this intervention especially in COVID-19 social distancing situations. However, self-disclosure interactions with digital social robots remain relatively unexplored. We conducted two online self-disclosure studies with adolescents (13-19 years old): our Active Listening Study compared experiences sharing positive, negative, and neutral feelings with a social robot, while our Journaling Study explored differences in sharing stressors by speaking with and without a social robot and by writing. We found that positive prompt tone improved mood while neutral prompt decreased stress, and less negative attitudes toward robots correlate with more qualitatively positive experiences with robot interactions. We also found robot disclosure interactions hold promising potential as a preferred method of self-disclosure over solo speaking, moderated by negative attitudes toward robots. This paper outlines limitations and future work from these studies.