How do young people use their phones?

MOBI-EXPO is an international study within MOBI-KIDS coordinated by CREAL (Spain) in collaboration with UU (The Netherlands), Whist Lab (France), and IFSTARR (France).

The main goals of this study are:

to validate the accuracy with which young people recall their mobile phone use; and
to characterise how young people use their mobile phones.

What is XMobiSense?

To track phone use, we developed an application called XMobiSense to record the number of phone calls; time spent talking on the phone; use of speaker phone or other hands-free kits; amount of data used; etc. No personal information (such as contacts or websites visited) is collected. This information will be used to characterise phone use habits among young people. In addition, six months after the volunteers use the phone with XMobiSense installed, we will ask them questions about their phone use during this time (based on the MOBI-KIDS questionnaire) and compare the responses to their actual recorded use.

Who is participating in this study?

All MOBI-KIDS countries have been invited to participate in MOBI-EXPO. Volunteers between 10 and 24 years old who use a mobile phone on average at least once a week are being recruited to join this study. This includes a set of about 45 subjects per country to whom one of the study's smartphones with XMobiSense is loaned for a period of one month, and a larger group of volunteers who own an Android phone and install the application on it. In addition to volunteers, MOBI-KIDS controls who use an Android phone are also invited to install the application on their phone. Their recorded use will then be compared to their questionnaire responses.

Current status

Recruitment of volunteers is finishing in July 2014. Results are expected in 2015.

Financial support

Financial support for this study is provided by the French Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health and Safety.