Smartphone app to investigate the relationship between social connectivity and mental health

Abstract

Abstract-Interpersonal relationships are necessary for successful daily functioning and wellbeing. Numerous studies have demonstrated the importance of social connectivity for mental health, both through direct peer-to-peer influence and by the location of individuals within their social network. Passive monitoring using smartphones provides an advanced tool to map social networks based on the proximity between individuals. This study investigates the feasibility of using a smartphone app to measure and assess the relationship between social network metrics and mental health. The app collected Bluetooth and mental health data in 63 participants. Social networks of proximity were estimated from Bluetooth data and 95% of the edges were scanned at least every 30 minutes. The majority of participants found this method of data collection acceptable and reported that they would be likely to participate in future studies using this app. These findings demonstrate the feasibility of using a smartphone app that participants can install on their own phone to investigate the relationship between social connectivity and mental health.

Using Mobile Phone Sensor Technology for Mental Health Research: Integrated Analysis to Identify Hidden Challenges and Potential Solutions (Preprint)

“…For example, we used push notifications and the Significant-Change Location Service to successfully increase data completeness on iOS devices compared to previous studies showing a significant disparity between Android and iOS data acquisition rates [20,21]. With the current version of the app, we no longer have a significant difference between Android and iOS data completeness.…”

“…Most of the limited work using smartphone Bluetooth to track social interactions has been performed in closed social networks [9,20,24,25]. In contrast, in the current study sensor data was collected from participants living within Australia who are unlikely to have social connections each other.…”

“…We developed Socialise as a native application in Java for Android and Objective-C for iOS in order to collect passive data (Bluetooth and GPS) and Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA). Building on the results of a previous validation and feasibility study [20,21], we have implemented several changes to improve scanning rates on iOS and here we tested Socialise version v0.2.…”

“…To date, most of the work using smartphone Bluetooth to track social interactions has been performed in closed social networks [9,20,24,25], whereas our approach was to collect Bluetooth connections in a real-world setting. When collecting Bluetooth data in open network settings, it is generally not possible to identify the devices that are detected.…”

Validation of a smartphone app to map social networks of proximity

“…This study demonstrates that it is feasible to collect Bluetooth data on participants' own smartphones, rather than distributing devices to participants for the duration of the study. This has important implications on the ability to use this technology at scale, which is, for example, needed to reliably identify social markers of mental health [36,37].…”