Findings from an experimental study of student behavioral patterns using smartphone sensors

Smartphones have become an integral part of our lives. People of various age groups use these devices in different ways for different purposes. Early studies to understand smartphone usage patterns were conducted through traditional methods such as manual logging, personal interviews or questionnaire. Particularly for the Indian context, there is very little literature on such studies and those that have attempted have been through traditional methods. With the emergence of mobile sensing which involves using the embedded sensors in mobile/smartphones, automatic, continuous and passive sensing has become a very easy and unobtrusive form of data collection. Therefore, in this work, we report findings of our experimental study on mobile phone use and other behavior, particularly by the student community at our institute. We analyze continuous sensing data collected from smartphones of 47 students over 45 days and infer their usage styles comprising of the total duration of mobile phone use per day, the most commonly used applications and the duration of their usage. As a goal for motivating social well-being, we also deduce the student physical activity levels, social interaction levels, and sleep duration using the built-in sensors. We believe our findings contribute to providing a broader understanding of technology use among students.