The humble smartphone has an array of features that can help us to keep track of our health, with previous research showcasing the possibilities for everything from mental health to Parkinson’s being monitored and detected via the data generated as we use our devices.

New research from Cornell University highlights how the location data from our phone, coupled with real-time survey data, show how our social environment affects our health.

The researchers equipped a group of elderly New York City residents with smartphones to monitor their movements.  The participants also reported their location several times each day, along with how they felt and what they were doing.

Daily movements

This activity diary included visits with friends, trips out for a coffee or to worship.  It also included what the participants saw on their travels, such as litter on the floor, damaged sidewalks, or vacant buildings.

The data revealed that in areas perceived as threatening or stressful in some way, a corresponding spike in pain or fatigue was also observed.  Indeed, when two or more of these disorderly conditions were observed, the participant was twice as likely to report feeling tired, and two-thirds as likely to report feeling pain.

“These fluctuations may have longer-term impacts on health and well-being for older adults who have to navigate demanding or distressing social environments on a regular basis,” the researchers explain.

The researchers pinged each participant to nudge them to complete their survey, and the completion rate was not only nearly total, but the surveys were completed within 15 minutes of each nudge on average.  It’s an outcome that prompts the researchers to argue that this method could offer a significant improvement on paper-based surveys to provide real-time analysis of population-level health and wellbeing.

“It’s an incredible tool for understanding how people experience and perceive their environments in real time, and then looking at how those environments may affect their health,” the researchers conclude. “We haven’t been able to get that insight in such a clean way in the past, so this approach has really exciting implications.”