The Shock, the Coping, the Resilience: How Smartphone Application Use Reveals Covid-19 Lockdown Effects on Human Behaviour

Abstract

Lockdown policies significantly restrict human mobility and lower the chance of virus transmission through physical contact. However, a critical question that must be addressed is how these policies affect individuals’ behavioural and psychological well-being during and after confinement periods. Here, we analyse China’s five most stringent city-level lockdowns during 2021, treating them as natural experiments that allow for examination of behavioural changes in millions of people before, during, and after the lockdowns via patterns in smartphone application use. We made three fundamental observations. First, physical and economic activity-related apps experienced a steep decline in use, yet those that provide daily necessities retained high usage. Second, apps that fulfilled lower-level human needs, such as working, socialising, information seeking, and entertainment, saw an immediate and substantial increase in screen time. Those that satisfied higher-level needs, such as education, only drew a delayed attention. Third, human behaviour demonstrated resilience as most routines resumed as lockdowns lifted. Nonetheless, long-term lifestyle changes were observed as significant numbers of people chose to continue working and learning online, becoming “digital residents.” We argue that lockdowns must be brief and carefully planned to minimise negative impacts on human life. Our findings also lead us to predict a surge of new online businesses in the post-pandemic era as well as escalated cybersecurity threats. We also hope that our method enriches the toolbox for studying mobile phone usage and enables a new perspective for in-depth investigation of human behaviours.

Keywords: COVID-19, lockdown, human behaviours, smartphone apps, natural experiments