Habits Measured By Cell Phone

A new study of over 100,000 cell phone users has been published, created to try and offer insights into human habits — and the new is we really are creatures of habit.

A new study into human habits that builds a picture of our habits by tracking our calls and texts on cellphones has been published in Nature. Utilizing data from over 100,000 people, it seems we’re very much creatures of habit – most of us move less than 10 km on a regular basis.

The individuals tracked were randomly selected from around six million anonymous cellphone users. Every time they received or made a call or text, their location was recorded.

This information was collected for six months to ascertain patterns of movement. But the researchers, from Northeastern University, say it only took half that time to come up with accurate movement patterns.

"The vast majority of people move around over a very short distance – around five to 10km," Professor Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, a member of the team, told the BBC. "Then there were a few that moved a couple of hundred kilometres on a regular basis."
The scientists say that people’s movements follow a mathematical relationship, called a power law, and that we tend to return to the same places time and again.