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Which Shelby County zip codes are people best at social distancing and staying at home?

We take a look at the Top 5 best and worst zip codes, according to Safe Graph.

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — We are digging deeper into new data which uncovers who is doing the best and worst when it comes to social distancing and staying at home in Shelby County.

Safe Graph uses mobile location data to figure out how much you and everyone else is moving around. If you are more than 150 meters from what Safe Graph believes is your home, it gets pinged.

"Getting an understanding of, ‘are these communities staying home or not?,’ is pretty helpful ," said Nick Singh, Safe Graph Spokesperson.

Singh says the company doesn't collect information about you specifically, but it does have information about mobile devices and their movement.

"What we are doing is just looking at devices in nighttime locations, like where it spends night time hours for about six weeks, and if it’s in the same spot - that is a good guess it's someone's house," said Singh.

And with that information, here is what Safe Graph has concluded about Shelby County.

Here are the top five best zip codes for people staying home.

Number one on the list is Germantown's 38183. The others are 38139, 38138, 38017, and 38018, which are in Collierville, Germantown, and South Cordova.

Credit: Safe Graph

So what zip codes are doing the worst? Well, that's where it gets interesting.

The zip code 38113 tops that list. That is essentially President’s Island, which is industrial. It is followed by 38132, 38130, and 38131. Those three zip codes are the airport and adjoining areas. Fifth on the list is 38088.

Credit: Safe Graph

The data shows that 4 of the 5 worst zip codes are in heavily industrial areas.

Experts say that makes sense, considering where the FedEx hub and other transportation businesses or industry are located. Many of those businesses are 24-hour a day operations and considered essential operations.

"At the aggregate level, when you look at enough devices, you are able to generalize and understand how folks are behaving even at the neighborhood level," said Singh.

Singh says this information is given to government agencies across the United States to analyze. He added it will be interesting to see how things change as the economy opens back up.

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