The last US presidential election has recently been among the top sources of stress for Americans. Yet that evidence is anecdotal. From 11,600 Nokia Health wearables, we collected readings of steps, sleep, and heart rate in the entire cities of London and San Francisco over the course of 1 year. For each type of reading, we measured the variation of volume over time (e.g., number of hours slept daily), its periodicity (e.g., weekly sleeping cycles), and its synchronicity (e.g., how many people in a city go to bed at the same time).
Christmas and New Year’s eve were associated only with short-lived and minor disruptions, while both Brexit and Trump’s election greatly impacted people's sleep and even heart rates. More specifically, in the weeks before Trump’s election, the average heart rate of people increased by more than 7 beats per minutes, to then go back to normal levels only after 4 months. For a whole week after that election, 30% more people went to bed at very unusual times. For a whole month after, the aggregate sleep was disrupted, partly compromising its weekly periodicity.
All this suggests that aggregate readings from consumer wearable devices reflect people's well-being at scale, and that the recent elections had a huge impact on people's productivity and health.
FAQs
What was the purpose of this study and what do you hope the results will help achieve?
The goal of this work was to determine whether consumer wearable devices could be used to monitor the well-being of entire cities.
Why is this work important?
This project proposed two new city-level metrics computed on a year's worth of wearable readings in the entire cities of London and San Francisco. Empirical evidence showed that these metrics are able to effectively track the well-being of city dwellers, both unobtrusively and cheaply.
Did any of the results surprise you?
There are two surprising findings. The first is that consumer wearable devices can be used to track a nation’s well-being. The second is that Brexit and Trump’s election had a significant impact on people’s well-being. In the weeks before Trump’s election, the average heart rate of people increased by more than 7 beats per minutes, to then go back to normal levels only after 4 months. For a whole week after that election, 30% more people had their sleep disrupted, and that continued for an entire month for part of them.
Daily average number of steps. The dates of the following four events are marked by horizontal lines (left to right): the Brexit referendum, the US presidential election, Christmas and New Year’s Eve.
Daily average hours slept. The dates of the following four events are marked by horizontal lines (left to right): the Brexit referendum, the US presidential election, Christmas and New Year’s Eve.
Daily average heart rate. The dates of the following four events are marked by horizontal lines (left to right): the Brexit referendum, the US presidential election, Christmas and New Year’s Eve.
Distribution of how much the sleep rhythm shifts (in terms of number of days) around Christmas and the US election. When the distribution does not follow the expectation for any random day (dashed curve) it means that the shift is anomalous, which is the case for the US election but not for Christmas.