This paper investigates the dual authentication processes inherent in the appification of everyday life, using Tinder as a case study. Drawing on established concepts such as "appification," the “grammar of action,” and recent scholarship on "authentication," we examine how Tinder transforms physical encounters into embodied digital gestures and how these gestures are subsequently validated through continuous, network-level processes. We distinguish between user authentication—occurring at the interface through actions like swiping and tapping that create a dynamic flow state—and machinic authentication, where backend data flows and network communications substantiate these interactions. Developing an integrated methodological approach, which we term the Networked Walkthrough method, we combine research personas with network traffic analysis to capture the temporal and affective dimensions of app use. Our findings reveal a marked asynchronicity between front-end events and back-end processes, underscoring how the user’s experience of app time emerges from the interplay of affective engagement and infrastructural data exchange. This dual perspective not only reconfigures our understanding of authenticity in dating apps but also illuminates the broader mechanisms by which apps orchestrate social interactions. The study contributes to an understanding of the complex infrastructures that underpin modern app ecosystems and invites further inquiry into the evolving temporal regimes of digital media.

This paper explores the use of food-tracking apps by the diabetic population in the UK. It focuses on the ways narratives of bodily control and moralistic health are communicated through the apps and the objective truth that the app platforms could cause harm to diabetic users. We suggest that the compounded messaging from food-tracking apps and diabetes care aimed at size reduction supports weight stigma. Further, the fiction of control over body size could explain the high rates of eating disorders in the diabetic population. Using digital walkthroughs on three popular food-tracking apps, we show how weight stigma is built into apps that many people with diabetes interact with daily. We conclude by presenting preliminary findings on our participatory design exercise with diabetic people to explore alternative options for technological interventions that could offer support for diabetes care and nutrition tracking while challenging the deceptive rationales that currently permeate these forms of self-tracking technology.

As dating apps become central to modern romantic and sexual interactions, concerns have emerged regarding their psychological and behavioral consequences. While some studies suggest that dating app usage (DAU) is associated with negative mental health outcomes—such as anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem—others report negligible effects, leaving the literature fragmented and inconclusive. Similarly, while some studies link DAU to increased engagement in risky behaviors, including unprotected sex and substance use, others find no significant relationship. This meta-analysis (k = 26, N = 28,896) synthesizes empirical research examining the associations between DAU, mental health outcomes, and risky behaviors. Results indicate a small but significant association between DAU and increased anxiety (r = .07, p = .001), depression (r = .06, p = .032), and lower self-esteem (r = -.06, p = .036). Additionally, DAU is moderately associated with higher engagement in risky behaviors (r = .13, p < .001). These findings underscore the dual impact of dating apps, both as facilitators of intimacy and pleasure and as potential sources of negative outcomes. While the results highlight important trends, they also emphasize the need for further research on reverse-causality mechanisms and moderating factors such as age, gender, and motivations for app use to better understand these relationships.

The paper explores the emergency notification app, developed in order to alert individuals to immediate danger while preserving the resilience of the home front as a whole. Drawing on walkthroughs of emergency apps and an analysis of related materials, I suggest how this disruption not only manifests in but also enables three interrelated processes: the dissolution of the national collective into individually-alerted users; the blurring of the distinction between emergency and routine; and the delegation of preparedness responsibility from the state to individual users. I argue that these three processes – facilitated by the seemingly life-saving, deeply personalized disruption of the emergency app – carry critical political consequences. By creating an illusion of personal safety, these processes, which materialize in the hand-held disruption app, allow for a prolonged state of exception and the indefinite protraction of war and danger.