Self-isolation, stay-at-home orders, and lockdowns have changed the way we live during the COVID-19 pandemic. As many of us work remotely, limit face-to-face interactions, and stay indoors, we are reaching for our smartphones more and increasing our mobile app use. Mobile app usage increased by 40% year-over-year in the second quarter of 2020, hitting an all-time high of over 200 billion hours of app usage in April. The average user is spending 4 hours and 20 minutes per day on their smartphones, frequently on social media.

Apps for games, entertainment, photo and video sharing, business, health and fitness, shopping, digital payments, and medical based apps all saw app usage growth since the pandemic started. As our app usage increases, so does our information sharing. We share our game scores on one social media platform. We share photos and videos on another social media platform . We even share the distance we ran or biked, and how many calories we burned. But we don’t share things such as banking information, passwords, and our medical information, or do we? As we increase our app use we need to think about the risks to privacy.