Americans are leaving their homes more and more, cell data shows

Marsha Disharoon takes a stroll, Tuesday, on Fort Myers Beach, Fla. [ANDREW WEST/FORT MYERS NEWS-PRESS VIA USA TODAY NETWORK]

Researchers have found Americans are venturing out of their homes more for the first time since social distancing guidelines were put in place in mid-March, despite warnings from experts strongly encouraging people to practice social distancing.

Led by Lei Z hang, director of the Maryland Transportation Institute at the University of Maryland, researchers have been tracking smartphone data to determine how well more than 100 million people are complying with stay-at-home orders. For six weeks, the percentage of people who were staying at home – meaning their phones moved less than a mile each day – increased or stayed the same.

On Easter Sunday, t he number of people staying home reached a record high, Zhang told USA TODAY. But on April 14, one day before thousands protested quarantine measures at Michigan's Capitol, t hat number started to drop.

After “almost two weeks, it has been consistently dropping across the country,” Zhang said. “Now for many states the level of their social distancing right now is about the same as the week of March 20th.”

Zhang's team developed a social distancing index which scores states and counties on a scale f rom 0 to 100 based on factors including the percentage of people staying home, the number of trip son average people make, how many miles people travel, and travel outside the state or county. A 10 point reduction in the index is equivalent to 10% fewer people staying home, Zhang said.

Nationwide, the index decreased from 52 to 44. Every state except for Rhode Island saw a decrease in social distancing, according to Zhang. The ten states with the largest drop in their social distancing index as of April 24 were: Louisiana, Ohio, Indiana, Vermont, Alabama, Michigan, Missouri, North Carolina, Texas and Arkansas.

Thomas W al le, CEO of Norwegian company Unacast which collects and analyzes location data from various sources, has also been using smartphone data to track how well Americans are complying with stayat- home orders. He said his social distancing scoreboard shows a similar drop in distance traveled around Easter and then a spike in both distance traveled and the number of devices in the same location in recent days.

“This is an early indication that we need to follow in the days and weeks to come of people having a fatigue,” Walle said. “You can definitely see that there' s starting to be a little trend here that people are more outside and less at home.”