Common multi-day rhythms in smartphone behavior

npj Digital Medicine, vol. 6, pp. 49

Abstract

The idea that abnormal human activities follow multi-day rhythms is found in ancient beliefs on the moon to modern clinical observations in epilepsy and mood disorders. To explore multi-day rhythms in healthy human behavior our analysis includes over 300 million smartphone touchscreen interactions logging up to 2 years of day-to-day activities (N401 subjects). At the level of each individual, we find a complex expression of multi-day rhythms where the rhythms occur scattered across diverse smartphone behaviors. With non-negative matrix factorization, we extract the scattered rhythms to reveal periods ranging from 7 to 52 days - cutting across age and gender. The rhythms are likely free-running - instead of being ubiquitously driven by the moon - as they did not show broad population-level synchronization even though the sampled population lived in northern Europe. We propose that multi-day rhythms are a common trait, but their consequences are uniquely experienced in day-to-day behavior.

Authors 2

1. Enea Ceolini Aachen Cognitive Psychology Unit Institute of Psychology, Leiden University

   Leiden University

   Affiliation as printed

   Cognitive Psychology Unit, Institute of Psychology, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands

2. Arko Ghosh corresponding Aachen Cognitive Psychology Unit Institute of Psychology, Leiden University

   Leiden University

   Affiliation as printed

   Cognitive Psychology Unit, Institute of Psychology, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands. a.ghosh@fsw.leidenuniv.nl

   Cognitive Psychology Unit, Institute of Psychology, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands