Proceedings of the 2025 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference
Pages 2270 - 2282
Abstract
Emerging adults (EAs) often struggle with their identity, making them vulnerable to mental health issues. This paper examines how EAs explore their identity through life-story writing, with an eye on how AI might help. Our interview study found that mandatory writing assignments, such as a Statement of Purpose for college applications, often triggered EAs’ identity exploration. These writing/identity exploration processes were collaborative between EAs and those closest to them. Collaborations succeeded when both parties had the skills and confidence to discuss EAs’ identities with enough intensity and directness, but not so much that it crossed the boundaries of their relationship. When collaborations failed, EAs resorted to consulting AI. These findings offer an alternative perspective to the traditional design of cognitive AI writing assistants, which assumes writers write about their lives proactively and privately. This work suggests that AI assistants might be more effective if they help (1) initiate EAs’ identity reflection while moderating its intensity, and (2) serve as a connective tissue among EAs and their support networks.
Introduction
Who am I? What is my purpose? Who do I hold most dear? Emerging adults (age 18-25) often grapple with these questions of identity. Arriving at misguided conclusions—such as believing that one’s life has no purpose or that no interpersonal connections are meaningful—has detrimental, lifelong consequences. It increases risks of depression, eating disorders, violence, substance abuse, and suicidal tendencies later in life. Alarmingly, such beliefs are becoming increasingly common. Last year, two in three emerging adults in the U.S. reported feeling that their lives lacked meaning or purpose; Nearly half (44%) felt that their lives do not matter to others.
A powerful remedy to emerging adults’ “identity crisis” is life-story writing, the practice of writing coherent narratives that connect one’s past, present, and future. As simple as it might seem, life-story writing engages writers in cognitive processes that significantly increase their sense of purpose and belonging, thereby improving their psychological resilience and reducing the likelihood of mental health issues later in life. AI writing assistants can further detect and enhance these cognitive processes. Recent HCI and AI work has started harnessing these opportunities, for example, by creating various AI journaling tools that encourage writers’ self-disclosure, self-reflectivity, or positivity. However, many other opportunities remain to enhance the cognitive processes of identity exploration. This paper explores these untapped possibilities.
This paper investigates how emerging adults in the U.S. explore their identities through life-story writing, with an eye on how AI assistants might help. We interviewed eight emerging adults (EAs) and seventeen individuals from their support networks, such as peers, parents, and mentors. We found that mandatory, external-audience-facing writing tasks, such as Statements of Purpose for college applications, triggered EAs’ identity exploration. These writing/identity exploration processes were collaborative among the EAs, their peers, parents, mentors, and counselors. Collaborations succeeded when all parties had the skills and confidence to discuss EAs’ identities with enough intensity to catalyze identity-related revelations, but not so much that it crossed the boundaries of their relationship. When collaborations failed, EAs resorted to consulting AI.
These findings offer an alternative perspective to the traditional design of AI writing assistants for identity exploration, which assumes writers write about their lives proactively and privately, such as when journaling. Instead, this study suggests that life-story writing—and the identity exploration it triggers—can also be externally-imposed, external-audience-facing, and highly collaborative. As a result, AI assistants designed for private use sometimes inadvertently served as an alternative, rather than an enhancement, to the valuable identity conversations between EAs and those closest to them.
We argue that AI assistants might be more effective if they help
(1) thoughtfully initiate life-story writing while moderating the intensity of identity reflections they trigger, and (2) serve as connective tissues among EAs and their support networks, enhancing their collective capacity in identity development support.
We discuss new forms AI assistants might take to achieve these goals.
This paper makes two contributions. First, it offers a rare description of how emerging adults in the U.S. explore their identity through life story writing. It is a valuable reference for future work that seeks to improve this practice. Second, it identifies new design opportunities for cognitive AI writing assistants, opportunities that extend well beyond prompting LLMs to encourage self-disclosure, self-reflectivity, or positivity. It opens up new avenues for HCI and CSCW design and research.
Discussion
What is my purpose? Who do I hold most dear? What communities do I belong? Emerging adults (EAs) often struggle with questions about their identity, making them vulnerable to mental health issues. This paper presents an interview study, examining how EAs explore their identity through life-story writing, with an eye on how AI might help. We found that mandatory life-story writing, such as SOPs for college applications and writing class assignments, often triggered EAs’ identity exploration. These writing-and-identity- exploration processes were highly collaborative between EAs and people closest to them. Collaborations effectively deepened EAs’ identity exploration when both parties had the skills and confidence to discuss EAs’ identities with enough directness and intensity, but not so much that it overstepped the boundaries of their relationship. When their attempts to collaborate failed, EAs resorted to AI for consultation.
These findings offer an alternative perspective to the traditional design of AI identity exploration support, which assumes writers write about their lives proactively and privately, similar to journaling. Instead, this study has shown that life-story writing—and the identity explorations it triggers—were sometimes externally-imposed, external-audience-facing, and highly collab- orative. In these contexts, AI assistants designed for private use sometimes inadvertently became an alternative, a cop-out, rather than an enhancement to the valuable identity conversations between EAs and people closest to them.
In light of these findings, we suggest that AI assistants could be more effective by helping EAs begin life-story writing and serving as a connective tissue among EAs and their support networks throughout the writing and identity exploration process. In the remainder of the paper, we will explore the new forms that AI assistants could take to achieve these goals, including those that disseminate the best practices identified in this study and those that seek to further enhance these practices.
