Feeling nervous when your internet connection isn’t working for a few minutes? Stressed when you forgot your phone in all haste to work? Are you the type checking your phone, while you just did so thirty seconds ago? Or bringing your charger everywhere suffering from dead-battery anxiety? Possibly you are suffering from nomophobia: a state of stress caused by having no access to or being unable to use one’s mobile phone (Hussung, 2015). It is the fear of getting disconnected with friends, family and the world. Nomophobia (no-mobile-phone-phobia) is considered a disorder of the modern world and a consequence of human interactivity with new technologies (King et al, 2013).
Research suggests 53 percent of all British phone owners suffers from nomophobia (Elmore, 2014). 55 Percent of the surveyed people cited that they fear to fail keeping in touch with family and friends when they could not use their phones. And did you know that one in five people reported that they would rather go without shoes for a week than without their smartphone?
To be honest, I caught myself having an acute nomophobia attack last week. On my way to the subway station Kralingse Zoom I realised I was missing something. So I checked my pockets: keys and OV-chip card still there. But then a moment of shock occurred: my phone was missing! Quickly I went through my bag, my pockets again and my bag again. No phone. I thought of all the photos and messages I could have lost… immediatley I ran back to the university. Luckily someone had found it and brought it to the reception and after just 20 minutes without one, I had my phone back.
The moment I realised what I actually was worried about in that quick 20 minutes without phone, I was wondering what had happened to me. I was always convinced I could live without phone but this incident made me thinking about the impact of today’s technologies and corresponding social development on my personal life. And of course, it Is undeniable that technologies such as smartphones make everyday life easier: finding your way in an unknown city has never been so easy and working anywhere at any time makes work so much more efficient. However, when the absence of something like a smartphone leads to negative feelings of anxiety and distress we must realise that there is some disturbed balance between real and online life.
Bibliography
Elmore, T. (2014). Nomophobia: a rising trend in students. Retrieved from: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/artificial-maturity/201409/nomophobia-rising-trend-in-students
Hussung, T. (2015). Emerging trends in psychology: tech dependency. Retrieved from: http://online.csp.edu/blog/psychology/technology-dependency
King, A. L. S., Valença, A. M., & Nardi, A. E. (2010). Nomophobia: the mobile phone in panic disorder with agoraphobia: reducing phobias or worsening of dependence?. Cognitive and Behavioral neurology, 23(1), 52-54.
Hey Frederike,
Really interesting read, glad to hear you were also lucky to find your phone! I know exactly how you feel, sometimes even when I briefly touch my pockets and don’t feel my phone my heart skips a beat, until I immediately check a second time and realize it was there the entire time.
Honestly, I’m not surprised such a condition emerged. With so many people addicted to their phones, some would prefer to even leave there house half naked than to leave their mobile device behind. This piece of technology has become such a significant part of our lives, but whether that’s good or bad is another discussion.
Interestingly, another condition that developed due to the addiction of mobile phones is the ‘Phantom Vibration Syndrome’, which is when people feel their phone vibrate or ring without it actually having done so. Previously known as “ringxiety”, the phenomenon was studied to show the impact technology has on our behavior. I myself have experienced this before as well.
A lot of people think they can live without their phones until it’s taken away from them. I think with the case of nomophobia, it will only rise through the years to come, as phones have now become a necessity rather than an obligation.
Phantom Vibration Syndrome:
– http://www.webmd.com/news/20160111/phones-phantom-vibration
Hi Frederike, really interesting article and definitely has a lot of relevance in today’s world where we depend so much on our mobile phones for everything from messaging to taking pictures to finding our way round foreign cities, like you’ve already mentioned. First of all I’m glad you’ve got your phone back; I think a lot of us have been in that situation when you feel like you’ve had your arm chopped off rather than just lost your phone, but that’s the reality of how intertwined our lives are with technology today, and how much we rely on our mobile phones. I like to think that I’m not in that 53% of British phone owners who suffer from Nomophobia, but saying that, whenever I find myself in some sort of awkward situation, like being in a lift with another person or sitting in a waiting room, my phone is always the first thing I reach for.
At the same time though I think it’s healthy to spend some purposeful time, however little it may be, away from our mobile phones. Although I don’t have one to hand, I’ve read a few articles about how the quality of relationships can really suffer if conducted primarily through social media. I remember when Facebook had just become popular quite a few years ago now, a lot of us being concerned with how many Facebook ‘friends’ we had instead of thinking about how many actual ‘real’ relationships we maintained with people. I wouldn’t say spending a lot of time using your mobile phone is a bad thing, as it has an insurmountable ability to connect people, but I think it’s very important to realise how much time we are actually spending on our phones, and not to neglect ‘real life’. For example, I’m sure we’ve all been sat round a dinner table with family when someone gets out their phone and starts browsing on Facebook, which although I’m sure I’ve been guilty of myself, find really quite annoying. This is where I think the mobile phone can hamper your life and become an addiction, when you’re more interested in reading the status of someone you haven’t spoken to in five years and are unlikely to speak to anytime soon, instead of conversing round the dinner table with the people you’re with there and then.
I’m probably sounding very old fashioned saying all of this, but I think Nomophobia could actually become a recognised ‘disease’ in the coming years, as people of younger and younger ages are introduced to technology and start to rely on it to communicate and keep in touch with the world. I saw two pictures recently of a bus stop, taken 30 years apart. The first picture showed several men and women standing round waiting for their bus chatting and laughing, whilst the other contained roughly the same number of people, but who were looking down at their phones and barely acknowledging one another. I think it’s very important that people stop for a minute to think about how much they use their phone, and a lot of us would do well, me included, to spend a lot less time browsing the web or scrolling through our Facebook feed when it really isn’t necessary.