Study Concludes App-Based Interventions Ineffective in Reducing Alcohol Abuse

Health Behavior News Service, part of the Center for Advancing Health, reports that there is no proof that smartphone apps help drinkers reduce their alcohol use.

A number of apps are available from the iTunes store aim to help users reduce their alcohol intake. A new study concludes that existing apps don’t work.

“The use of mobile tech, smartphones and the Web is becoming huge in terms of communicating information to people, but we really didn’t find any empirically based apps to help people quit drinking,” Amy Cohn, Ph.D., lead study author and an assistant professor in the department of mental health law and policy at the University of South Florida in Tampa, said.

The study appears online and in the December issue of the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.
 
In January, Cohn and colleagues inventoried iTunes store apps that addressed alcohol use and behavior. At the time they did the search, about 350,000 apps were available in the iTunes store. The authors did not survey apps on Google for Android or other smartphone platforms.