Dougal Sutherland: Can mobile phone activity predict moods?

We’re constantly looking for ways to spot early signs of problems such as depression or bipolar disorder, based on the idea that the earlier we can spot signs the earlier we can intervene.  

Traditionally in psychology this has relied on asking people to monitor themselves and report back. Lots of problems inherent in this e.g., lack of motivation, lack of awareness, not knowing what to look for, self-fulfilling prophecies, etc. Psychology research is often hampered by lack of more objective ways of collecting information that don’t rely so much on self-report of individuals.  

New methods are emerging which look at how someone’s pattern of typing on a smartphone keyboard might predict early onset of depression.  

Firstly – rest assured this isn’t some new and frightening emergence of big-brother watching your keystrokes! For this research people had to download a specific keyboard to use with their phone that feeds back results to researchers about their typing patterns, it didn’t capture the content of what they were writing. This is referred to as passive-sensing as doesn’t require any extra effort from people, just for them to keep using their phone as usual.  

A number of interesting findings about depression:  

• When depressed, people have lower accuracy in spelling and more variability in typing speed – possibly reflects slow-down in their thinking. 
• They also tend to have more times using their phone than when not depressed – might indicate loneliness and social withdrawal. 
• When people are depressed, they have much higher rates of using the backspace key than when not depressed – suggests they’re making more errors which could be due to slowing down of thinking or lots of ruminating about life and going round and round in their heads. 

For people with bipolar disorder, they’re more likely to have high rates of backspace use when also having increased levels of activity and decreased levels of sleep – both of which are warning signs of a possible manic episode.  

Other interesting research using technology:  

Smartphone apps monitoring daily patterns of behaviour reduced reoccurrence of periods of depression. This was done by tracking when people slowed down in their levels of daily activity and had less periods of being outside in daylight. The app would alert them to this change, and suggesting that if the pattern continued, they could get depressed again – this led people to get more outside activity. 

Some interesting possible implications:  

• Could be really helpful in noticing early warning signs of things like depression in a really unobtrusive way. 
• Imagine linking this data in with AI who could send you info about early warning signs and what to do about them, plus link you in with a psychologist if needed. 
• Potentially gives people the ability to monitor themselves and make small changes in their behaviour to prevent getting depressed and without having to see a psychologist. 
• Nice to have some good news about potential benefits of technology and given we usually focus on how these things can suck us down into the dark underbelly of the internet! 

LISTEN ABOVE 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack team podcast
from News Talks.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
They'd be it's time to catch up with protical psychologist
Google Sutherland, who's with us this morning with a fascinating
new study.

Speaker 3 (00:17):
Good morning, Google, Cure Jack and I think you know,
the biggest question on everybody's lips was when when the
Smiths are going to be coming up?

Speaker 2 (00:27):
Smith?

Speaker 4 (00:27):
Don't you do that?

Speaker 3 (00:30):
You're not going to I know they're not going to
reunite any time at all, but you know, that.

Speaker 4 (00:33):
Would have been. That'd be a great thing to I.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
Mean, that would be like a little Morrissey tour would.

Speaker 3 (00:38):
Be yeah, yeah, well yeah, that's not going to happen,
but anyway, yes.

Speaker 2 (00:43):
Yeah, no, no, it's yeah, yeah, that would be. That
would be a real trick.

Speaker 4 (00:47):
Now, that would be.

Speaker 2 (00:48):
There's probably My theory is just that there's money in.

Speaker 3 (00:50):
It, you know, one hundred you know, if you look
at the people who you know, they're targeting at those
people who are probably their kids have left home and
they've got a little bit of extra spending cash, and
oh yeah, we could go to that as opposed as
a four old you know, you know, twenty year olds
who are struggling on the doll and don't have any
money to spend on concert tickets.

Speaker 4 (01:10):
So let's tag at the people with lots of money
in their pocket.

Speaker 2 (01:13):
Yeah, hey, I've just done a quick google. Apparently apparently
Morrissey is playing in Bogatart.

Speaker 4 (01:18):
Really in Colombia. There you go. Okay, look, you know
with a trip, I guess playing a.

Speaker 2 (01:25):
Bit and then and then following it up with a
concert in Greece. So okay, Well there's wouldn't say never.

Speaker 3 (01:32):
I mean, it's it's Christmas time and like you know,
it's people are looking around for a gift ideas for me,
so that family that's.

Speaker 2 (01:40):
Like the budget extends.

Speaker 4 (01:42):
Yes, yeah, exceltely.

Speaker 2 (01:44):
Hey, it's funny we're always looking for Yeah. We always
hear that our phone usage is you know, we all
many of us are on our phones too much, and
that often our phone usage can be kind of anty social.
It leads to all sorts of negative impacts. But there's
a fascinating new study you have for us this week
look at ways to try and spot early signs of

(02:04):
problems like depression or bipole. And it's linked to your phone.

Speaker 3 (02:08):
Yeah, I know, And it was when I when I
started reading this, I thought, you know, oh god, it'd
just be another way one of those ones that says
stop doom scrolling and blah blah blah and get off
social media and it and our goy was I was
really fascinated by this. So what they did, now before
people get excited or worried, perhaps worried, they did have
to download a special keyboard for use in this study.

Speaker 4 (02:31):
So this wasn't.

Speaker 3 (02:31):
Monitoring your your your phone just by some sort of nefarious.

Speaker 2 (02:35):
They knew this was happening. It wasn't somebody.

Speaker 3 (02:38):
They knew this was no, no, no, and they had
a special keyboard to monitor it. But basically what they
found was that a number of interesting patterns emerged from
looking at people's keystrokes on their on their phone, on
their cell phone.

Speaker 4 (02:52):
So sort of three main things that they found.

Speaker 3 (02:55):
Certainly, when people were starting to get depressed, so they
were okay, but then they were those early warning signs
starting to come on. They started to notice much lower
accuracy in their spell and they're typing speed going up
and down, which is probably they think reflective of you know,
when you start to get a bit depressed, you're thinking

(03:17):
everything kind of slows down a bit, and it's a
bit like thinking sort of in mud and you try,
it's always a bit more of a struggle. They found
that people tended to use their phone more when they
were getting than they were when they're not depressed, which
they were thinking might be related to lonely and withdrawing
socially and therefore starting to use my phone.

Speaker 2 (03:39):
Moremsel lonelier and withdraw further. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (03:43):
Yeah, kind of self fulfilling prophecy, right in terms of, yeah,
now you spend lots of time on your phone and
you don't socialize as much, and then you worry about
the fact that nobody's really calling me, or I haven't
been out with anybody, so I'll go on my phone more.

Speaker 4 (03:54):
So that's it's it's a it's a tricky, you know,
spiral to fall into. I think the most fascinating one
that I found, anyway, was.

Speaker 3 (04:02):
That they found that people when they're getting depressed had
much higher rates of using their backspace key, which.

Speaker 4 (04:08):
Is like wow.

Speaker 3 (04:10):
And again it's the the idea that you're probably typing.

Speaker 4 (04:15):
More errors.

Speaker 3 (04:17):
When you are or thinking or getting caught up in
your own thinking, and so you're typing something and then
oh no, no, that's not writ in backspace, backspace, backspace, And
so they found that there was an increased rate of
this increase rate of backspacing using your keyboard on your
phone predicted whether you're become.

Speaker 4 (04:33):
Depressed or not, which was quite a quite a fascinating
little finding.

Speaker 2 (04:36):
I thought, it is really interesting, is what I anticipated
you would say, So is it? Do you think because
people are like second guessing themselves.

Speaker 3 (04:47):
Yeah, second guessing and getting caught up and you start
writing something and then go oh no, you know that's
not right, or and maybe part of it too again
that's sort of slowing down of your thinking skills that you,
I know, what.

Speaker 4 (05:01):
Do I want to say? I can't?

Speaker 3 (05:02):
Oh no that's not right. Back backpack, back back, and
you know, just self doubt too. You know, when you
get depressed, you doubt yourself and think, oh my god,
no that I shouldn't say that. No, no, So so
there was just this increased flurry of backspacing, and they
found that that was a really great predictor of when
people were going to get depressed. So I thought, I

(05:22):
thought that was such a fascinating you know, just from
one literally almost one key on your phone was going
to predict your mood. It was sort of like, wow,
that's that could be That could be revolutionary in many ways.

Speaker 2 (05:32):
Yes, So what do you think are the possible implications
from this?

Speaker 3 (05:37):
Well, look, I think, you know, you could conceivably we're
beginning to use apps in AI more and more in
mental health, and I know it's a debatable area and
we need to do it with lots of caution, But
imagine if you could hook this up, you know, and
that you've got an alert on your phone saying hey, look,
we've noticed in the past couple of days your backspace

(05:58):
rate has increased. We're wondering this might be a, you know,
an early sign of depression.

Speaker 4 (06:03):
What do you know? Do you want to do something
about it? So just give people that feedback.

Speaker 3 (06:08):
If you're working with a psychologist or a counselor, it
might be able to send them some info in real
time saying, hey, you know, perhaps monitor Google. We've just
noticed as backspace rate has increased.

Speaker 4 (06:19):
That might indicate as moods going down.

Speaker 3 (06:22):
But just really sort of linking in a real kind
of early intervention self awareness, and I think it could
be potentially quite revolutionary.

Speaker 2 (06:31):
It's really interesting. Isn't that amazing? I suppose in some
respects this is a bit of good news about the
technology in our lives, if you're honest in a productive way.

Speaker 3 (06:44):
Look, let's remember, really that the Internet is just a tool,
and we can use the tool for good or for
in quotes bad. And I think this is an opportunity
to see how we could potentially use it for something
for something good, for something helpful for our mental health,
rather than it's sort of being always the thing.

Speaker 4 (07:03):
That's causing our mental health problems.

Speaker 3 (07:05):
This is actually the flips and saying, hey, look, if
we harness this technology properly, maybe maybe it could be
really useful for helping people's.

Speaker 2 (07:13):
Mentor Yeah, yeah, great point. Hey, thank you so much too.
Will you always find these amazing studies? For us, we'd
never never come across the table, but for you and we, honestly,
it's so interesting.

Speaker 3 (07:22):
I spend many many hours jack late at night looking
for these studies just so I can come on and
tell you.

Speaker 2 (07:28):
Well, I can't imagine they're all this interesting. So the
fact that really interesting ones and and filter them for
us there's very much appreciated.

Speaker 4 (07:36):
Yeah, there's a lot of drudgery there that I just
had to scroll and.

Speaker 2 (07:39):
Go yeah, yeah, Hey, thank you so much, have a
great weekend.

Speaker 4 (07:43):
Hold you again.

Speaker 1 (07:45):
For more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame, listen live
to news talks that'd be from nine am Saturday, or
follow the podcast on iHeartRadio