This practitioner paper aims to explore loneliness as a growing (mental) health risk among young people, particularly in bereavement, and outlines how digital interventions can complement human support via the Apart of Me (AoM) therapeutic game and its proposed evolution into AoM 2.0.
Adopting a theoretical and conceptual lens, this paper draws on research in psychology and social neuroscience to analyse technology’s role in exacerbating and alleviating loneliness. It outlines how enhanced quest systems, voice integration, adaptive chatbot support and asynchronous community features can connect digital engagement with real-world interaction to inform design principles for AoM 2.0. The discussion combines a narrative literature review with lived experience to strengthen ecological validity.
While technology can offer immediate emotional support, its true potential in reducing loneliness – especially among bereaved youth – lies in complementing and scaffolding real-world relationships. The design of AoM 2.0 supports this by encouraging offline interactions through structured quests, promoting physiological safety via voice features, offering personalised emotional regulation via chatbots and fostering identity and belonging through community tools.
This paper offers an original, theoretically grounded framework for designing digital intervention features that specifically target loneliness in bereaved young people. It uniquely integrates neuroscientific insights with psychological theories to create a coherent pathway from scientific understanding to practical digital implementation, emphasising a deliberate shift from digital dependence to real-world re-engagement. The inclusion of a lived experience perspective further enhances its originality.
