Nowadays, people struggle to find a balance with their smartphone use. Existing tools for digital-self control have proven ineffective in the long term due to their over-restrictive nature. In this paper, we developed Brainy, a gamified mobile application that encourage users towards healthy digital habits using a virtual brain pet that reflect the state of the user’s brain concerning their digital wellbeing. Through a 10-day in-the-wild study with 17 users, we found that the app effectively enhanced users’ awareness of their smartphone usage patterns and its consequences on their brains. Gamification elements, such as the daily wellbeing bar, were well-perceived by users, helping them reflect and motivating towards healthier habits thus showing promising opportunities for supporting digital wellbeing. Our findings open the way for the use of gamification elements in digital wellbeing apps to better support people.

Recent advancements in AI, particularly Generative AI (GenAI) and Large Language Models (LLMs), have facilitated the integration of AI techniques into digital wellbeing applications, i.e., digital tools that aim at helping people’s wellbeing as a sum of mental and emotional wellness. These AI-powered systems hold the potential to foster healthier habits by collecting and analyzing user behavioral data to provide personalized and dynamic solutions tailored to each user’s needs and lifestyle, therefore improving the efficacy with respect to traditional non-AI interventions. Yet, their development presents significant challenges, including ethical concerns, privacy risks, and the potential for over-reliance on automated interventions. In this paper, we conduct a systematic literature review to examine the key characteristics, challenges, and opportunities in the existing research about AI-powered digital wellbeing tools. Based on our findings, we propose a design framework that outlines 6 critical dimensions and 23 sub-dimensions, spacing from user data and privacy to intervention strategies and personalization, offering practical guidance for researchers and practitioners developing AI-powered digital wellbeing applications. The framework emphasizes the importance of developing tailored and adaptive user-centered interventions adhering to scientific principles, psychological models and responsible data collection. We discuss the applicability and utility of our framework in evaluating and guiding the integration of AI in digital wellbeing applications.