SynthesisInternational journal of environmental research and public health2021
Ethics of Gamification in Health and Fitness-Tracking.
Synthesis in International journal of environmental research and public health, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed.
- Designing a Gamified mHealth App for HIV Prevention and Comorbidities Among Malaysian Young Men Who Have Sex With Men: An Interdisciplinary Expert Panel Study.Journal of medical Internet research · 2026Article
- Is Gamification the New Panacea for Health Behavioral Changes? Implications for the Health and Life Insurance Industry.JMIR serious games · 2026Article
- Healthism and Digital Self-Tracking: Reinventing the Individualistic Ethos in Chile.Sociology of health & illness · 2025Article
- Designing for Engagement in Primary Health Education Through Digital Game-Based Learning: Cross-National Behavioral Evidence from the iLearn4Health Platform.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Digital Fitness Revolution: User Perspectives on Fitbit's Role in Health Management.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Gamified Digital Mental Health Interventions for Young People: Scoping Review of Ethical Aspects During Development and Implementation.JMIR serious games · 2024Article
- Immersive interfaces for clinical applications: current status and future perspective.Frontiers in neurorobotics · 2024Review
- Positive and Negative Impacts of Gamification on the Fitness Industry.European journal of investigation in health, psychology and education · 2023Review
- Smart Devices for Health and Wellness Applied to Tele-Exercise: An Overview of New Trends and Technologies Such as IoT and AI.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Review
- Intrinsic motivations in health and fitness app engagement: A mediation model of entertainment.Digital healthArticle
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
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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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.