Insights – Future Implications of Passive Smartphone Sensing in the Therapeutic Context.

Background: Due to the ubiquitous use of smartphones in daily life, they offer unique opportunities to study human behavior. This study sheds light on associations between self-reported stress, drive, and mood levels and smartphone usage behavior. Methods: A total of 157 students installed the Insights app on their personal smartphone and tracked smartphone usage behavior. Furthermore, students assessed self-reported levels of stress, drive, and mood for 8 weeks. Results: Three multilevel models were used to associate smartphone usage behavior and self-reported mood, drive, and stress levels. Results indicate a negative association of self-reported stress and number of SMS (–3.539, SE = 0.937) as well as a positive relation of stress and call duration (0.018, SE = 0.937). Mood was linked negatively with total usage time (–0.019, SE = 0.004) and call duration (–0.016, SE = 0.007). Moreover, drive was negatively associated with Facebook usage time (–0.127, SE = 0.041). Discussion: Overall smartphone usage behavior is negatively associated with measurements of well-being. Conclusion: Passive smartphone tracking could assist in the standardized assessment of behavioral data in real life in the future. Due to the risk of data misuse, ethical, legal, and clinical guidelines have to be developed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]