Investigation of daily patterns for smartphone keystroke dynamics based on loneliness and social isolation

Abstract

This study examined the relationship between loneliness levels and daily patterns of mobile keystroke dynamics in healthy individuals. Sixty-six young healthy Koreans participated in the experiment. Over five weeks, the participants used a custom Android keyboard. We divided the participants into four groups based on their level of loneliness (no loneliness, moderate loneliness, severe loneliness, and very severe loneliness). The very severe loneliness group demonstrated significantly higher typing counts during sleep time than the other three groups (one-way ANOVA, F = 3.75, p < 0.05). In addition, the average cosine similarity value of weekday and weekend typing patterns in the very severe loneliness group was higher than that in the no loneliness group (Welch’s t-test, t = 2.27, p < 0.05). This meant that the no loneliness group’s weekday and weekend typing patterns varied, whereas the very severe loneliness group’s weekday and weekend typing patterns did not. Our results indicated that individuals with very high levels of loneliness tended to use mobile keyboards during late-night hours and did not significantly change their smartphone usage behavior between weekdays and weekends. These findings suggest that mobile keystroke dynamics have the potential to be used for the early detection of loneliness and the development of targeted interventions.