Mobile Phone: Child Psychologist

from the this-is-helping,-how? dept

We've seen all sorts of mobile phone applications over the years, and some are more bizarre than others. The latest is an attempt to use the mobile phones to monitor adolescent depression. It's not doing this in any sophisticated way, mind you. In fact, it's fairly low tech. Basically, the phone just has a survey on it, and kids are asked to answer the questions on a regular basis. The phone doesn't even transmit the answers back to the home base, either, but the kid needs to bring the phone to the researchers to download the answers each week (they eventually hope to transfer the data over the network, but are afraid that it would be costly). With that in mind, it's not really clear how this really does anything, other than move a survey from a piece of paper to a phone, which might make kids a bit more willing to fill it out (or, maybe not...). It sounds like we're still quite a ways away from the phone that biometrically determines your state of mind, and then uses some sort of Pavlovian ringtone to cheer you up. Maybe next year.

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