You can hide your feelings from friends and family, but new preliminary research suggests you may not be able to hide from your own smartphone. In a Journal of Medical Internet Research study published this week, Northwestern University researchers found data collected from a smartphone can predict the user's feelings of depression with 86.5 percent accuracy.
The 28 study participants downloaded an app that tracked their GPS data and phone usage for two weeks. Participants who self-identified as depressed spent an average of 68 minutes on their phone each day, compared to 17 minutes for non-depressed users. People with depressed also went fewer places.
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