Strengthening Invisible Ties: Decreasing Loneliness Indices of University Students Through a Gamified Mobile App
- During the periods of social isolation to contain the advance of COVID-19 in 2020 and 2021, educational institutions have had the challenge to adopt technological strategies not only to ensure continuity in students’ classes, but also to support their mental health in a period of uncertainty and health risks. Loneliness is an emotional distress caused by the lack of meaningful social connections;During the periods of social isolation to contain the advance of COVID-19 in 2020 and 2021, educational institutions have had the challenge to adopt technological strategies not only to ensure continuity in students’ classes, but also to support their mental health in a period of uncertainty and health risks. Loneliness is an emotional distress caused by the lack of meaningful social connections; it has increasingly affected young adults worldwide during the pandemic's social isolation and still bears psychological effects in the current post-pandemic period. In the light of this challenge, the Nonenliness App was developed as a way to bring together university communities to address issues related to loneliness and mental health disorders through a gamified and social online environment. In this paper, we present the app and its main functionalities (Beta version) and discuss the preliminary results of a pilot clinical study conducted with university students in Germany (N = 12) to verify the app's efficacy and usability, alongside the challenges faced and the next steps to be taken regarding the platform's improvement.…


| Document Type: | Conference Proceeding |
|---|---|
| Conference Type: | Konferenzartikel |
| Zitierlink: | https://opus.hs-offenburg.de/6276 | Bibliografische Angaben |
| Title (English): | Strengthening Invisible Ties: Decreasing Loneliness Indices of University Students Through a Gamified Mobile App |
| Conference: | GoodIT 2022: ACM International Conference on Information Technology for Social Good, September 7-9, 2022, Limassol, Cyprus |
| Author: | Rogério Augusto Bordini ORCiD, Oliver KornStaff MemberORCiDGND |
| Year of Publication: | 2022 |
| Date of first Publication: | 2022/09/07 |
| Creating Corporation: | Association for Computing Machinery |
| Place of publication: | New York |
| Publisher: | ACM Press |
| First Page: | 424 |
| Last Page: | 430 |
| Parent Title (English): | GoodIT '22: Proceedings of the 2022 ACM Conference on Information Technology for Social Good |
| ISBN: | 978-1-4503-9284-6 |
| DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1145/3524458.3548489 |
| Language: | English | Inhaltliche Informationen |
| Institutes: | Fakultät Medien (M) (ab 22.04.2021) |
| Research: | ACI - Affective and Cognitive Institute |
| Collections of the Offenburg University: | Bibliografie |
| DDC classes: | 000 Allgemeines, Informatik, Informationswissenschaft |
| 100 Philosophie und Psychologie | |
| Tag: | Einsamkeit; Isolation; Verlassenheit COVID; HCI; Social Isolation; University students; gamification; loneliness; mobile app | Formale Angaben |
| Relevance for "Jahresbericht über Forschungsleistungen": | Konferenzbeitrag: h5-Index < 30 |
| Open Access: | Closed |
| Licence (German): | Urheberrechtlich geschützt |




