Gamification applied to the treatment of pornography addiction: development of a psychological support app
Keywords:
Pornography Addiction, Gamification, Mobile Application, Psychology, Behavioral SupportAbstract
Addictions, whether related to substance use, gaming, social networks, pornography, or other compulsive behaviors, represent one of the greatest contemporary challenges to mental health. Their causes involve a complex interaction between emotional, biological, and social factors, and treatment generally requires psychological support, personal motivation, and persistence. In this context, technology emerges as an important ally in building accessible and personalized therapeutic support solutions. This work aims to develop a mobile application that helps people with pornography addiction through gamification, promoting self-control and user engagement in their own journey of overcoming. The proposal consists of offering a plat form with interactive challenges, daily goals, symbolic rewards and monitoring of individual progress, using game elements to encourage the continuity of the process. By integrating user-centered design features and principles of psychology behavioral, the system aims to act as a complementary tool to traditional treatment methods, expanding the reach of motivational strategies in an intuitive and accessible way. It is expected that the application will contribute to the reduction of relapses, the strengthening of autonomy, and the improvement of users' quality of life
References
[1] ANDERSSON, G.; CARLBRING, P.; CUIJPERS, P. Guided internet-based vs. face-to-face cognitive behavior therapy for psychiatric and somatic disorders: a systematic review and meta-analysis. World Psychiatry, v. 13, n. 3, p. 288-295, 2014. page 7.
[2] ANDERSSON, G. et al. Internet-delivered psychological treatments: from innovation to implementation. World Psychiatry, v. 13, n. 1, p. 47-57, 2014. Cited on page 9.
[3] BOENDERMAKER, W. J.; PRINS, P. J. M.; WIERS, R. W. Cognitive bias modification for adolescents with substance use problems— can serious games help? Elsevier, 2017. on 5 jul. 2025. Cited on page 4.
[4] BRADLEY, J.; JONES, M. B.; SAKIMURA, N. JSON Web Token (JWT). 2015. . Accessed on 19 May 2025. Cited on page 12.
[5] BRAND, M.; LAIER, C.; YOUNG, K. S. Internet addiction: coping styles, expectancies, and treatment implications. Frontiers in Psychology, v. 10, p. 1412, 2019. page 7.
[6] Future Media Environments. on 6 jul. 2025. Cited in Cited in BRASIL. SUS registra 400.3 thousand atendimentos por transtornos relacionados ao uso de álcool e drogas em 2021. 2022. . Accessed on 9 May 2025. Cited on page.
[7] . CGI. Research on the use of information and communication technologies in Brazilian households: TIC Domicílios Survey. 2023. . Cited on page 1.
[8] CUGELMAN, B. Gamification: What it is and why it matters to digital health behavior change developers. JMIR Serious Games, v. 8, n. 2, 2013. Cited on page 5.
[9] CUGELMAN, B. Gamification: What it is and why it matters to digital health behavior change developers. JMIR Serious Games, v. 8, n. 2, 2020. Cited on page 1.
[10] DETERDING, S. et al. From game design elements to gamefulness: Defining In: Proceedings of the 15th International Academic MindTrek Conference: Envisioning s.n.]), 2011. p. 915. Cited on page 7.
[11] DRUG, F. T. N. What Devices Do Consumers Use to Watch Porn? 2020. . Accessed Cited on page 2.
[12] FACEBOOK. React Native - Create native apps for Android and 105 using React. 2025. . Accessed on 12.
[13] May 2025. Cited on page 10.
[14] FIGMA. Figma: A collaborative tool for interface design. 2025. . Accessed on 13 Nov 2025. Cited on page 14.
[15] FOWLER, M. Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture. 2002. . Accessed May 19, 2025. Cited on page 12.
[16] GARCIA, E. D. What AsyncStorage is in React Native. 2019. . Accessed Nov 14, 2025. Cited on page 15.
[17] GRANT, J. E. et al. Introduction to behavioral addictions. The American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse, vol. 36, no. 5, pp. 233-241, 2010. Cited on page 6.
[18] INFOESCOLA. Limbic system. 2025. . Accessed May 17, 2025. Cited 2 times on pages v and 6. KING, D. L.; DELFABBRO, P. H.; GRIFFITHS, M. D. Cognitive behavioral therapy for problematic video game players: Conceptual considerations and practice issues. Journal of Cognitive Psychotherapy, vol. 31, no. 4, pp. 261-273, 2017. Cited on page &.
[19] KRAUS, S. W.; SIKORA, A.; POTENZA, M. N. Problematic pornography use: Clinical perspectives. Current Addiction Reports, vol. 7, pp. 203-211, 2020. pages | and 2.
[20] LISTER, C. et al. Just a fad? gamification in health and fitness apps. JMIR Serious Games, vol. 2, no. 2, p. e9, 2014. Cited on page 8.
[21] MICROSOFT. Visual Studio Code. 2025. . Accessed May 12, 2025. Cited on page 12.
[22] Cited 2 times on the POSTGRES. What is PostgreSQL? 2025. . Accessed Dec 6, 2025. Cited on page 11.
[23] PRIVARA, M.; BOB, P. Pornography consumption and cognitive-affective distress. The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, vol. 211, no. 10, pp. 641-646, 2023. Available at: . Cited on page 1.
[24] REDHAT. What is open source? 2025. . Accessed Nov 14, 2025. Cited on page 14.
[25] SPIDERSDILIGENCE. Rewire Companion: Quit Porn. 2021. . Accessed May 19, 2025. Cited on page 9.
[26] STATES, U. FDA allows marketing of first mobile medical application to help treat substance use disorders. 2017. Accessed Jul 5, 2025. Available at: . Cited on page 4.
[27] SUPABASE. Supabase / The Postgres Development Platform. 2025. . Accessed Nov 10, 2025. Cited on page 11.
[28] UMMID. India, US, Brazil lead porn consumption in 2019. 2020. . Accessed Jul 6, 2025. Cited on page 2.
