Not all smartphone owners use their device in the same way. In this work, we uncover broad, latent patterns of mobile phone use behavior. We conducted a study where, via a dedicated logging app, we collected daily mobile phone activity data from a sample of 340 participants for a period of four weeks. Through an unsupervised learning approach and a methodologically rigorous analysis, we reveal five generic phone use profiles which describe at least 10% of the participants each: limited use, business use, power use, and personality- & externally induced problematic use. We provide evidence that intense mobile phone use alone does not predict negative well-being. Instead, our approach automatically revealed two groups with tendencies for lower well-being, which are characterized by nightly phone use sessions.
@article{arxiv.1807.02472,
title = {Typical Phone Use Habits: Intense Use Does Not Predict Negative Well-Being},
author = {Kleomenis Katevas and Ioannis Arapakis and Martin Pielot},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1807.02472},
year = {2018}
}