A Longitudinal Analysis of Gamification in Untappd: Ethical Reflections on a Social Drinking Application

2026-01-08

arXiv.org

AI Summary

This study investigates the ethical implications of gamification mechanisms—such as badges and streaks—on the social drinking platform Untappd, which may encourage high-risk alcohol consumption and raise concerns regarding user autonomy and well-being. Conducting the first longitudinal ethical analysis of a social drinking application from 2020 to 2025, the research employs a qualitative comparative analysis of five badge systems, integrating classical ethical theories with software engineering ethics frameworks. Findings reveal that despite minor adjustments and disclaimers introduced by the platform, most original ethical concerns persist. The study underscores the necessity of embedding ethical reflection throughout the software development lifecycle and offers a novel paradigm for ongoing ethical evaluation in digital health applications.

Technology Category

• Natural Language Processing: Ethics — Bias, Fairness, Transparency & Privacy
• Philosophy and Ethics of AI: Societal Impact of AI
• Machine Learning: Ethics, Bias, and Fairness

Application Category

• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Accountability, Transparency, and Ethics for personalization
• Responsible Web: Social and technical mechanisms of refusal for web technologies and applications
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Fairness and ethical considerations in crowd work and in human-in-the-loop AI systems

Abstract

This paper presents a longitudinal ethical analysis of Untappd, a social drinking application that gamifies beer consumption through badges, streaks, and social sharing. Building on an exploratory study conducted in 2020, we revisit the platform in 2025 to examine how its gamification features and ethical framings have evolved. Drawing on traditional ethical theory and practical frameworks for Software Engineering, we analyze five categories of badges and their implications for user autonomy and well-being. Our findings show that, despite small adjustments and superficial disclaimers, many of the original ethical issues remain. We argue for continuous ethical reflection built embedded into software lifecycles to prevent the normalization of risky behaviors through design.

Problem

• gamification
• ethical issues
• social drinking application
• user autonomy
• risky behavior

Innovation

• longitudinal ethical analysis
• gamification
• social drinking application
• software engineering ethics
• user autonomy