Passive Smartphone Sensing of Adolescents’ Mental Health: A Multilevel Meta-Analysis

Adolescence is a critical developmental stage in which the risk of mental health problems peaks. Passive smartphone sensing offers valuable opportunities for moment-to-moment assessment of such risk. The amount of research is growing steadily, but a quantitative synthesis of the literature is lacking. Therefore, this meta-analysis evaluated the association between passive smartphone data (e.g. GPS, call logs and notifications) and adolescents’ (12–24 years) mental health outcomes across 45 independent samples ( N  = 2939). Findings revealed a small but significant overall effect ( r  = .12). Most passive data correlated with mental health outcomes, except the number of contacts, while linguistic markers showed a significant negative correlation. Associations were not moderated by study design features or type of outcome, but were significantly stronger in non-student than in student samples. These results highlight passive smartphone sensing as a promising tool for assessing precursors of adolescent’ mental health and provide guidance for future research.