Abstract
Nearly two-thirds of college students report feelings of loneliness, and belonging
concerns rival cost as a primary driver of attrition—challenges that disproportionately affect
first-year, first-generation, LGBTQ+, and transfer students. Existing digital platforms fail to
address this gap: anonymous apps like YikYak cannot facilitate lasting personal connections,
while neighborhood-based tools like Nextdoor are poorly suited to a college campus’s fluid
social geography. Common Grounds is a privacy-first mobile application designed to connect
students through interest-based proximity matching, moving users from screens into face-to-face
encounters. Built in Flutter with a Firebase backend and targeting Android for its more flexible
background location permissions, the system employs geohash-based proximity search at a
coarse resolution to enable discovery of nearby peers without continuous GPS tracking or precise
location exposure. A category-weighted Overlap Coefficient algorithm computes match scores
based on shared interests (weighted at 80%) and compatible social-style “vibe tags” (20%),
surfacing relevant connections without penalizing users who have broad or diverse interests.
Connection proceeds through a mutual-consent wave mechanism: users browse nearby profiles,
send waves to express interest, and unlock in-app messaging only after both parties have opted
in—ensuring that no identifying information is revealed without reciprocal agreement. Waves
expire after 48 hours to prevent stale interactions. Beta testing with five University of Virginia
undergraduates validated core functionality across authentication, profile creation, proximity
detection, matching, and real-time messaging, achieving a 100% completion rate with zero
crashes. Testers reported high comfort with the app’s privacy controls and location-consent
flows, while the evaluation identified actionable improvements to onboarding clarity,
confirmation feedback for user actions, and empty-state messaging that now inform a concrete
development roadmap. Common Grounds provides a deployable, scalable framework for
institutions seeking to strengthen student belonging through technology that treats connection,
rather than engagement, as its primary design objective.
This sociotechnical analysis investigates a central question: in what ways do social media
platforms such as Instagram and TikTok affect college students’ sense of belonging and
loneliness? Drawing on Donna Haraway’s concept of situated knowledges and Langdon
Winner’s theory that technological artifacts embody political values in their design, and
employing a literature review, platform discourse analysis, and an original survey of 18 UVA
undergraduates, the paper argues that these platforms undermine genuine belonging through
three interconnected mechanisms that form a reinforcing cycle. First, quantified metrics such as
like and follower counts drive social comparison by constructing a visible hierarchy of social
worth, with survey data showing that two-thirds of respondents felt lonelier after seeing peers’
posts about events they were excluded from. Second, algorithmic feeds and infinite scroll
promote passive consumption as the dominant mode of use—nearly 80% of surveyed students
reported scrolling without posting or commenting—displacing the active, reciprocal interaction
that sustains real relationships. Third, TikTok’s algorithmically curated content fosters parasocial
relationships with creators, offering simulated companionship that reduces the perceived urgency
of seeking authentic connection. These mechanisms are not independent but mutually
reinforcing: comparison generates inadequacy, passive scrolling amplifies exposure to that
comparison, and parasocial comfort diminishes the motivation to break the cycle. Applying
Winner’s framework, the paper demonstrates that features like the like button, the For You page
algorithm, and infinite scroll function as political artifacts whose design serves platform
advertising revenue at the expense of user well-being. Haraway’s framework reveals that these
structural effects are not uniform; first-generation students, students of color, and LGBTQ+
students experience them differently depending on their situated social positions. The analysis
concludes by positioning Common Grounds as an alternative political artifact that demonstrates
how design can be redirected toward belonging rather than attention, and reframes the loneliness
crisis as a consequence of design choices rather than individual willpower.
The sociotechnical analysis and the technical project are designed as complementary
halves of a single capstone argument. The analysis diagnoses a specific problem—that dominant
social media platforms function as political artifacts whose engagement-driven design erodes
belonging—and the technical project responds by encoding an alternative set of values into a
working system. Each design decision in Common Grounds directly addresses a mechanism
identified in the paper: the mutual-consent wave replaces the public hierarchy of likes,
transparent interest-matching replaces opaque algorithmic curation optimized for watch time,
and coarse geohash-based location processing replaces precise, persistent tracking. The
sociotechnical analysis also informs the project’s economic reasoning; because the paper traces
harmful design features to an advertising-revenue model that treats attention as the product,
Common Grounds proposes freemium subscription and university licensing models that align the
platform’s incentives with user well-being. Haraway’s situated-knowledges framework shapes
the technical project’s explicit focus on underconnected populations, ensuring that the design
accounts for equity rather than assuming a universal user. Together, the two halves demonstrate
that the loneliness crisis on college campuses is not inevitable but is a consequence of
design—and that design, guided by sociotechnical analysis, can be redirected toward belonging.
