An example of an information processing system includes a hand-held terminal. The hand-held terminal senses sensor information for determining an emotion of a user. The sensor information may be, for example, information of a sound sensed by a microphone, or information of an image captured by a camera. The information processing system determines the emotion of the user on the basis of the sensor information. The hand-held terminal senses the sensor information in a period during which the hand-held terminal is in a standby state. The standby state is, for example, a state in which a display of the hand-held terminal is turned off.
