Indulging in smartphone apps to help track libations & limits.
Last week Best Buy Mobile commissioned a study and found that if given the choice between giving up alcohol or their cellphone for a week—respondents were almost evenly split—but the result was ultimately 60/40, with just slightly more people opting to abstain from drinking, so as to retain the mobile.
If the choice were real, not only would there be a drop in drunk dialing, but the study also found that a quarter of respondents admit to using their mobile phone to send SMS messages while intoxicated. Apparently drinking and cellphones really do go hand-in-hand, quite literally.
This is confirmed with a survey of the drinking related smartphone app landscape, which reveals a very advanced and broadly-developed culture of digital tapping and tippling.
To get the party started, food & wine matchers, sports bar locators, virtual beers and handheld drinkin’ games.
Next up, iPhone apps you can’t be without at the bar: beer counters, drink timers, pick up line generators (such as the piguplines app which comes with a squealing pig noise), signature cocktail recipe databases, and the never-alone feeling of being part of a mobile social network of drinking brand buddies, like, say, Absolut vodka drinkers connected via a GPS iPhone app.
And for after the bar, another suite of drinking downloads to be sure you have: R U Drunk quizzes, portable breathalyzers, one-button hail-a-taxi cab callers. And to further ensure you don’t do something you’ll deeply regret the next day: the Bad Decision Blocker is useful as what TechCrunch calls a “weapon in the war against drunk dials.”
All that’s missing are some apps to prevent drunk texting—to keep the 25% who admitted to it in the Best Buy Mobile survey from texter’s remorse!
Luckily Google already has an app to help prevent drunk emailing (it’s called GoogleGoggles).
What about drunk twittering? The Zappos.com blog tongue-in-cheek public service video “Don’t Let Friends Friend’s Friends Drunk Twitter” can be found here.
On the other hand, maybe cellphones and bar-hopping nights on the town actually don’t go together very well: over 60,000 cellphones are left in NYC cabs each year, and last year 60,000 mobile phones were left behind in London taxis over only 6 months.
On a more serious note, the cultural connection between drinking and cellphone use is the basis for an interesting and unconventional 2009 study at UC Irvine. There researchers in the psychology department are using texting to collect data on substance use among preteens. The study will encourage ‘tweens (aged 10-13) to digitally disclose and discuss their exposure to (and consumption of) alcohol via anonymous mobile instant messaging to university student researchers. More about the study can be found here.
Nice blog! Keep up the good work.