Have you looked into your pocket and your mobile phone is not there and you start searching for it desperately in your room, car, purse, bag?
The mobile phones have become a necessity because of the countless benefits it provides, such as personal calendar, email, calculator, video game player, camera, music player, chat, etc. It’s part of our life.
Nowadays the technology has become the center of life of the world, giving us a better life, but sometime this doesn’t result so good because it has been creating some dependencies on people and then turning it into an addiction like it’s the case of mobile phones or Internet making people use their computers in excessive and dependent on it.
Here is where the word “Nomophobia” appeared. It is a new concept known as the feeling of leaving your mobile phone somewhere, get very anxious when it runs out of battery or credit. If you always have the feeling of leaving you phone at home, probably you may suffer it.
The word Nomophobia came from the word “no mobile” (no-mo) and it was discovered in the U.K because they noticed that people feel insecure without it, becoming this in the new disease of the XXI century. This term was invented by YouGov, a UK-based research organization in 2008.
SecurEnvoy made a study and find out that in the U.K. 70% of women worry more about losing their phones and men 61%.
According to the study, the younger you are, the more likely you are to suffer from nomophobia.
One of the reasons is because the teenagers want to be connected with their friends 24 hours a day.
Did you know that people check their phones about 34 times a day in average?
Symptoms:
- Feeling of boredom, loneliness, insecurity.
- Get panicky when you’re not with your phone and became very anxious, affecting negatively the concentration of the person.
- Do whatever you can do to locate the mobile phone.
- Don’t go to school or work because you’re searching for your phone.
- Take the phone to bed with you.
- Use the mobile phone more than three hours a day.
Is there a cure for nomophobia?
Nomophobes can be treated by exposure therapy:
- First, the person can start imagining what it would be like to be without a phone and then spend small amounts of time away from the phone and using it when it’s necessarily.
- Turn off the mobile phone while you’re sleeping
Sources:
5 réponses à “Nomophobia: A 21st Century fear”
I recognize symptoms of nomophobia from my own behavior! Though I’m working in environment where personal cell phones are forbidden, so I’m used to living without my phone 8 hours a day IF I know it’s with me… If I forgot it at home, it’s totally different situation!
As I don’t have a smart phone at the moment, a computer is good substitute for a cell phone and I don’t miss my phone, if I’m able to use the internet, but as soon as I’ll havea Lumia, it will become my most important thing!
In Finnish language phone is “puhelin” and “elin” is organ. I could live without one kidney, but not without phone, so “puh-elin” is my most important organ!
When I was teenager I could’t leave home without my mobile phone. I was all the time hearing the vibration of the phone and I checked it almost every five minutes, so yeah, it was sickness. Now I’m living without my phone, because I have other materials in my life 🙂
Although the author treats this subject with a degree of humour, the underlying seriousness of the problem is only now being understood. A recent article in the Daily Mail suggests it is becoming the most common modern phobia. Similarly recent automobile accident figures in Australia cite nomophobia as a cause of driver inattention, which then leads to to accidents. See the 11th AAMI YOUNG DRIVERS INDEX May 2012 report.
I refuse to accept symptoms of that illness in my behaviour. Seriously not everybody has nomophobia. I believe it is more likely for teenagers to get it. But the fact that I feel like without a hand, without a cellphone, does not necessarily mean that I have nomophobia. Besides having your cellphone is important during our day-to-day life. So, I don’t have nomophobia, I just like to have my cellphone with me:P.
What impresses me the most is that this is a worldwide issue. As we can see from the people that have commented on the blog, we’re all from different nationalities and some of us even live on opposite sides of the world but we all have the same feelings that attaches us to our cellphones. No matter the culture, or the cellphone we have, we’re completely connected to it. It’s as if it was just a matter of having a cellphone and a friend that has one too.
But this sickness should seriously start worrying us, technology is evolving at such a high speed and we’re letting our selves go with it without noticing the changes on our attitudes and lifestyles.
I can’t imagine what will come next in our cellphones, but I hope psychologists won’t start making money out of me.