Fleeting and fading media effects became more sustainable after repeated human-agent interactions

Yuqian (Neil) Ni (Grady postdoctoral research associate), Joshua Baldwin (Grady postdoctoral research associate), Allan Tate, Michael Schmidt, Kyle Johnsen, & Sun Joo (Grace) Ahn (2025). “Fleeting and fading media effects became more sustainable after repeated human-agent interactions,” paper accepted for presentation at the International Communication Association annual conference, Denver, June.

Abstract: Despite the longstanding interest in media’s power to drive long-term behavioral changes, empirical understanding of how subsequential effects accumulate from successive single exposure instances remains limited. This study reports longitudinal data collected over six months from a technology-integrated health intervention, the Virtual Fitness Buddy (VFB). VFB is a media ecosystem designed to promote physical activity (PA) in children through wearables, sensors, mobile phones, a mixed-reality kiosk, and virtual agents. Our data revealed a sharp increase in PA on the day children interacted with virtual agents, followed by a rapid decay. Importantly, the decay pattern evolved over the six-month intervention—slowing down among children with initial lower engagement in PA and accelerating among those with initial higher engagement in PA. Beyond confirming the effectiveness of the VFB ecosystem, this study contributes to our understanding of temporal dynamics of media effects and advances connections between short- and long-term outcomes.