Supporting Our Valued Adolescents or SOVA is a social media website developed in 2016 by Dr. Ana Radovic, a pediatrician and adolescent and young adult medicine subspecialist at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh. The goals of SOVA are to address negative health beliefs such as stigma, grow an anonymous online social support community for adolescents and young adults with symptoms of depression or anxiety, and lead to increased help-seeking and engagement with treatment and use of helpful self-management strategies. To date, we have published over 1000 posts.
Isn’t social media bad for teens?
It depends how teens use social media – there can be many benefits in using social media, but it’s hard to avoid negative consequences like cyberbullying, especially for depressed youth. SOVA offers a healthier alternative with clear site guidelines, no private conversations, and site moderation by a team with a behavioral health background. The website is interactive but anonymous.
Who creates content for SOVA?
Over half of our articles are currently written by youth themselves, termed SOVA Peer Ambassadors. These are adolescents and young adults with prior or current depression or anxiety who are recruited to contribute authentic article content, with the goal of increasing engagement in other SOVA Users who read content by others like them. SOVA Peer Ambassadors are compensated $15/month for their contributions. The rest of the articles are written by our research team.
Is there anything for parents too?
Yes! The SOVA website has an accompanying website, wiseSOVA. This site features daily blogposts as well as a mental health resource guide for parents who want to quickly find the answers to important questions such as sharing your mental health family history with your child, when to seek help for your child, sleep disturbances, and information about mental health advocacy groups, parent support groups, and treatment resources.
Can I use SOVA?
Yes! Anyone can go to our site for adolescents and young adults or our site for parents and read the articles. Anyone interested in commenting on articles will have to register for the website as a user. They consent to a research study where we only collect site use. Anyone interested in writing for the site, or being a Blogging Ambassador, can check out the information here and email us that they are interested at socialmediastudy@chp.edu and we will take it from there!
What current research is going on with SOVA?
We are always recruiting new blogging ambassadors. See above.
Currently, the SOVA intervention is being used as part of the Tech-E study which is evaluating the use of the MoodRing intervention compared to usual care. To enroll and find out if you qualify, go to: redcap.link/cayah to complete a screen.
We are also trying to understand if SOVA can be a helpful intervention for low-income youth, mostly of color, in workforce development settings.