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In this chapter, I explore the multifaceted gamified digital disconnection within the technology-driven context. Forest, as a productivity app pioneering a gamified approach to foster focused work, embodies a paradox of using apps infused with game design elements to aid users in their quest for digital disconnection. Employing the app walkthrough method, drawing on disconnection and gamification research, in this chapter I critically examine Forest’s game design elements, and the paradoxical role disconnection plays in a hyperconnected context. Three primary game design elements – game feedback, social connectivity, and real-life contribution – are identified as facilitators of disconnective practices in the app. These game design elements encourage users not only to optimise their own disconnective experiences but to compete with peers and contribute to nature. The indicated work may, at times, seem to contradict the app’s intended goals, making distractions, fostering social connections, and potentially greenwashing rather than blocking distractions, promoting individual disconnection, and greening the environment., The author is funded by the Department of Media and Communication at University of Oslo, and supported by the project “Intrusive media, ambivalent users and digital detox (DIGITOX)” (2019–2024) funded by the Research Council of Norway (grant no. 287563).

Sleep is a crucial part of our lives, as we spend about one-third of our lives sleeping. In a digital age, mobile apps on smartphones play an important role in self-improvement regarding sleep. Gamification techniques can be particularly employed by app designers to strengthen users’ motivation and participation. This thesis aims to take an empirical focus examining the ways in which gamification is adopted by mobile apps as a strategy to regulate users’ sleep and affect their everyday(night) life. A case study on a mobile app - SleepTown is conducted to take a closer look at how people engage with sleep-regulating apps and make sense of their sleeping/gaming practices in the physical and virtual space, in the sleeping and waking world. The study is theoretically informed by the sociological perception of sleep, the interdisciplinary study of gamification, Foucauldian notions of governmentality and surveillance, media engagement theory, and Actor-Network Theory. Through semi-structured interviews with twelve users, the author creates an understanding that the gamification strategy enacts a mode of governmentality, as users are recruited as willing participants who submit to monitoring in a gameful setting. The game mechanism of SleepTown creates a fun environment for users to regulate their sleep patterns under self- and mutual surveillance. Digital technologies have the agency to delimit the scope within which apps are designed with rules, while users can use their autonomy when engaging with the app in daily life. Their engagement with SleepTown varies in forms and in intensity. Users not only adapt to the game rules in varying degrees but also develop different tactics to satisfy their needs, constantly negotiating their relationships with the app, sleep routine, and daily routine. The interplay between the technological affordances and human users shapes the app function as well as the meaning of sleep. In the deep mediatized context, users’ online and offline p