Lack of physical activity is an increasingly important health risk. Modern mobile technology, such as smartphones and digital measurement devices, provides new opportunities to tackle physical inactivity. This paper describes the design of a system that aims to encourage young adults to be more physically active. The system monitors the user’s behavior, uses social comparison and provides tailored and personalized feedback based on intelligent reasoning mechanisms. As the name suggests, social processes play an important role in the Active2Gether system. The design choices and functioning of the system are described in detail. Based on the experiences with the development and deployment of the system, a number of lessons learnt are provided and suggestions are proposed for improvements in future developments.

In this study, an agent-based simulation is proposed to investigate the emotional control, motivation, and behavioral adaptation in a virtual dietary ecosystem. The experiments are based on the generative agent based modeling (GABM) approach, where each agent is allowed to behave with realistic and context-sensitive emotional and motivational behavior. In the simulation, autonomous agents are allowed to interact on simulated days with each of the five distinct personality traits, health goals, and behavioral barriers to reflect on the diversity of real human populations. The proposed framework allows agents to engage with each other, share their feelings, and dynamically modify their coping mechanisms in the socially interacting environment. Context-sensitive conversations allow the agents to exchange experiences, offer assistance, and analyze their mental and behavioral conditions, which result in the development of emergent social and emotional behaviors that are highly reminiscent of human interaction. Every agent implements one of six fundamentals of emotion regulation (ER): mindfulness, reappraisal, relaxation, suppression, rumination, or none, to cope with stress and continue working on personal objectives. These strategies have a direct effect on stress, motivation, and dietary behavior, so the simulation will be able to simulate individual adaptation with time. Adaptive strategies, such as mindfulness and reappraisal enhance motivation decrease stress and increase emotional stability. On the other hand Maladaptive strategies, such as suppression and rumination increase stress and impair healthy behaviors.