Kahoot! is an incredibly useful platform for motivating students to engage in their learning. It does this by gamifying the learning process. I have used Kahoot! since 2012 as a student and as a TA since 2020 when it became difficult to create a sense of community in the classroom as we were all online. I turned entire tutorials into Kahoot games where students were engaged and thinking about the questions that were asked.
In this manner, creating competition can generate interest and encourage socialization where it may not already be occurring. There are, however, downsides to using Kahoot and gamifying learning. If students are competing against each other, and that is the only type of interaction that occurs in your class. Your class culture will likely create a sense of competition among students outside of these games. In a subject like math, where students may already feel lots of anxiety, this could result in pushing students away from participating in your class as they are afraid of losing, i.e. being wrong. This destructive culture could result in less student interaction and increase their anxieties around grades, rather than increasing interaction as intended. Therefore we need to be careful about how often we use direct competition in our classrooms, and remember to emphasize the collective nature of learning.