TY - CPAPER U1 - Konferenzveröffentlichung A1 - Bordini, Rogério Augusto A1 - Korn, Oliver ED - Aguilar Rodríguez, Jimena ED - Alvarez Igarzábal, Federico ED - Debus, Michael S. ED - Maughan, Curtis L. ED - Song, Su-Jin ED - Vozaru, Miruna ED - Zimmermann, Felix T1 - Gamification and Mobile Apps: Allies in Reducing Loneliness Among Young Adults T2 - Mental Health | Atmospheres | Video Games N2 - The isolation measures adopted during the COVID-19 pandemic brought light to discussions related to the importance of meaningful social relationships as a basic need to human well-being. But even before the pandemic outbreak in the years 2020 and 2021, organizations and scholars were already drawing attention to the growing numbers related to lonely people in the world (World Economic Forum, 2019). Loneliness is an emotional distress caused by the lack of meaningful social connections, which affects people worldwide across all age groups, mainly young adults (Rook, 1984). The use of digital technologies has gained prominence as a means of alleviating the distress. As an example, studies have shown the benefits of using digital games both to stimulate social interactions (Steinfield, Ellison & Lampe, 2008) and to enhance the effects of digital interventions for mental health treatments, through gamification (Fleming et al., 2017). It is with these aspects in mind that the gamified app Noneliness was designed with the intention of reducing loneliness rates among young students at a German university. In addition to sharing the related works that supported the application development, this chapter also presents the aspects considered for the resource's design, its main functionalities, and the preliminary results related to the reduction of loneliness in the target audience. KW - loneliness KW - gamification KW - digital games KW - mental health apps Y1 - 2022 SN - 978-3-8394-6264-5 (PDF) SB - 978-3-8394-6264-5 (PDF) SN - 978-3-7328-6264-1 (EPUB) SB - 978-3-7328-6264-1 (EPUB) SN - 978-3-8376-6264-1 (Print) SB - 978-3-8376-6264-1 (Print) U6 - https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839462645-009?locatt=mode:legacy DO - https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839462645-009?locatt=mode:legacy VL - New Directions in Game Research II SP - 87 EP - 102 PB - transcript CY - Bielefeld ER -