Social media platforms aim to engage users, particularly adolescents and young adults, to actively participate in online activities. Social media companies profit from user data and time spent on their platforms; therefore, they often incorporate addictive elements to increase users’ engagement. After having conducted a thorough review of existing social media platforms aimed at adolescents, we realised that there was no social media for promoting communication and socialization of adolescents without addictive features. To fill this gap, we developed the GoOff, a web application designed to enable students to plan face-to-face events with their peers. GoOff has functionalities of social media, but we intentionally left out most of the addictive elements to keep adolescents online as little as possible and encourage them to interact in person. The app development process required over 1200 hours of work. In the first part of the presentation, we describe the goals, functionalities, and technical aspects of the GoOff application. In the second part, we present the results of the empirical study, in which we tested and evaluated the GoOff application. Thirty-four 9th grade primary school students participated in the study. We observed their online behaviour in the application and evaluated their friendships using the sociometric test and the Friendship scale. The results showed that students who were more interested in the application created more events for socializing offline. Students who were more satisfied with their friendships, were more likely to participate in face-to-face events organised by their peers compared to their lonelier classmates. Our study confirms the potential of the GoOff web application to promote and facilitate face-to-face interactions among adolescents in innovative ways.

Keywords: Adolescents, social media, web application, face-to-face communication, offline, GoOff.