Everyone has their own way of unlocking their phone these days. Some people use fingerprints, some use facial recognition, some use patterns and codes and some daring others place no security checkpoints at all to unlock their phones. With so much info stored in our phones and the countless ways in which it can be used, who doesn’t want to keep their phone secure? Now, while their phone can reveal almost everything about a person, a new study has revealed that their locking and unlocking habits themselves can reveal some info about the person as well.
According to a new study published by the University of British Colombia in Vancouver says that different people from specific age groups have specific habits when it comes to locking their phone. The studied took 134 volunteers between the ages of 19 and 63 and analysed the way in which how their technology usage differed. Researched Konstantin Beznosov was on hand to explain how the habits of younger people differed from their older counterparts.
According to Beznosov, younger people tend to use fingerprint unlocking more than older people these days, due to the much quicker speed of unlocking compared to traditional PIN codes. This shouldn’t come as a surprise since everyone seems to be short on time in today’s fast-moving world. “Even a small difference between the unlocking time, how long it takes to unlock with a PIN versus fingerprint makes a difference,” comments Beznosov.
Older people are also more likely to depend on their phone’s auto-lock feature than younger individuals, which is once again unsurprising since they seem to be much more sensitive about the contents of their phones. In addition to locking and unlocking patterns, the study analyzed how long each session of usage was and the number of sessions for people from different groups. On average for each 10-year age gap in individuals, the frequency of smartphone usage increased by 25%.
Age isn’t the only thing they took into account, and gender-specific habits were also highlighted. According to the study, men are more likely to rely on the auto-lock feature than women. Whether that means something or not, we’ll let you decide for yourself. Do the findings of the study fall in line with your own real-life observations? Do let us know in the comments below!