The Relation between Phone Usage and Mood

Have you ever wondered how your phone usage affects your mood? I sure have.

I have been tracking my mood for over 1500 days using the Daylio app. My phone usage is automatically tracked using the Digital Wellbeing app on Android. I decided to look back on the last 4 weeks of data. Here’s what I found.

Per day, I spend just over an hour on my phone, receive on average 80 notifications, and unlock my phone just under 50 times. None of the mood correlations were statistically significant with N = 28. It was somewhat surprising that the correlations were positive. This means that I have used my phone more in the last four weeks on days with a higher mood. Note that correlation is not causation. Perhaps I use my phone more because I am feeling high. Alternatively, I could feel higher because of effective phone usage for activities that uplift me. Or the correlations could be entirely explained by some other variables and just happen to be the way are for this time period.

Not surprisingly there was a significant correlation (r = 0.535) between the number of minutes spent on my phone and the number of unlocks that day. It’s also interesting to note that the correlation between screen time and mood jumps from -0.05 to 0.19 if you remove the outlier day of 215 minutes. This may hint at the common wisdom that all things are good in moderation. The screen time variable may only affect my mood at its extremes. Even there, the direction of causality may be reversed. I may be on my phone more because I’m feeling down and not the other way around.

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