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Ethics of Gamification in Health and Fitness-Tracking

The use of game-like elements is become increasingly popular in the context of fitness and health apps. While such “gamified” apps hold great potential in motivating people to improve their health, they also come with a “darker side”. Recent work suggests that these gamified health apps raise a numb...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Arora, Chirag, Razavian, Maryam
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8583052/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34769570
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph182111052
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author Arora, Chirag
Razavian, Maryam
author_facet Arora, Chirag
Razavian, Maryam
author_sort Arora, Chirag
collection PubMed
description The use of game-like elements is become increasingly popular in the context of fitness and health apps. While such “gamified” apps hold great potential in motivating people to improve their health, they also come with a “darker side”. Recent work suggests that these gamified health apps raise a number of ethical challenges that, if left unaddressed, are not only morally problematic but also have adverse effects on user health and engagement with the apps. However, studies highlighting the ethical challenges of gamification have also met with criticism, indicating that they fall short of providing guidance to practitioners. In avoiding this mistake, this paper seeks to advance the goal of facilitating a practice-relevant guide for designers of gamified health apps to address ethical issues raised by use of such apps. More specifically, the paper seeks to achieve two major aims: (a) to propose a revised practice-relevant theoretical framework that outlines the responsibilities of the designers of gamified health apps, and (b) to provide a landscape of the various ethical issues related to gamified health apps based on a systematic literature review of the empirical literature investigating adverse effects of such apps.
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spelling pubmed-85830522021-11-12 Ethics of Gamification in Health and Fitness-Tracking Arora, Chirag Razavian, Maryam Int J Environ Res Public Health Article The use of game-like elements is become increasingly popular in the context of fitness and health apps. While such “gamified” apps hold great potential in motivating people to improve their health, they also come with a “darker side”. Recent work suggests that these gamified health apps raise a number of ethical challenges that, if left unaddressed, are not only morally problematic but also have adverse effects on user health and engagement with the apps. However, studies highlighting the ethical challenges of gamification have also met with criticism, indicating that they fall short of providing guidance to practitioners. In avoiding this mistake, this paper seeks to advance the goal of facilitating a practice-relevant guide for designers of gamified health apps to address ethical issues raised by use of such apps. More specifically, the paper seeks to achieve two major aims: (a) to propose a revised practice-relevant theoretical framework that outlines the responsibilities of the designers of gamified health apps, and (b) to provide a landscape of the various ethical issues related to gamified health apps based on a systematic literature review of the empirical literature investigating adverse effects of such apps. MDPI 2021-10-21 /pmc/articles/PMC8583052/ /pubmed/34769570 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph182111052 Text en © 2021 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Arora, Chirag
Razavian, Maryam
Ethics of Gamification in Health and Fitness-Tracking
title Ethics of Gamification in Health and Fitness-Tracking
title_full Ethics of Gamification in Health and Fitness-Tracking
title_fullStr Ethics of Gamification in Health and Fitness-Tracking
title_full_unstemmed Ethics of Gamification in Health and Fitness-Tracking
title_short Ethics of Gamification in Health and Fitness-Tracking
title_sort ethics of gamification in health and fitness-tracking
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8583052/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34769570
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph182111052
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