Nomophobia – fear of being without a smartphone

More and more people in the world suffer from nomophobia – the fear of being without a smartphone. Due to a low battery, lack of internet connection, forgetfulness or some other reason. Some psychiatrists even call the morbid attachment to gadgets an international problem. Research shows that the craving for constant viewing of content on a smartphone is caused not so much by a love for the device or its content, but rather by a lack of psychological contact in real life and a lack of emotional response in face-to-face communication.

My dear friend

The term “nomophobia” is an abbreviation for the expression “fear of being left without a mobile phone” – “no mobile phone phobia”. And although the official US nomenclature for mental disorders and diseases (Diagnostic Manual of Mental Disorders) there is no such term yet; it already contains its descriptive characteristics.

Some researchers they’re already putting a similar disorder is on a par with other phobias: fear of certain animals (herpetophobia – fear of snakes, arachnophobia – fear of spiders, etc.), fear of heights, fear of closed spaces, etc. People suffering from nomophobia experience the same symptoms as and for many other phobias: nervous tremors, increased sweating, difficulty breathing, severe agitation.

The term “nomophobia” arose back in 2008. It was used by the UK Postal Service in a YouGov survey.

It was then that it became known that 53% of Britons surveyed “are afraid of being in a situation where they lose their mobile phone, or it runs out of funds, or the battery runs out, or the phone is out of range of the network.”

Scientists believe that the roots of this phenomenon are even deeper – in 1983, the term “technophobia” appeared in psychology, that is, the fear of new technologies and devices against the backdrop of rapidly developing technology and electronics.

Ironically, it was in 1983 that first worldwide commercial mobile phone Motorola DynaTAC 8000X. Since then, mobile phones have turned into full-fledged computers and multimedia centers, and people staring at their screens, gathered to “talk” with each other in a cafe or walking down the street, have become a ubiquitous phenomenon.

Experts increasingly say that people turned out to be in captivity of gadgets, and nomophobia has already become a worldwide phenomenon. Last year an international study, conducted by scientists from Canada and Bahrain: 71% of adults surveyed in ten countries reported signs of moderate nomophobia – when a person’s condition changes noticeably, and 21% reported severe nomophobia – when a person’s condition changes so much that he cannot continue normal activities until the symptoms will not go away. The study involved 12.5 thousand people.

Those surveyed from the “students and college students” group were the most susceptible to nomophobia. In it, the proportion of those who are susceptible to a high degree of nomophobia turned out to be above average – 25%.

Son, are you a nomophobe?

Scientists from Iowa State University developed a self-diagnosis technique that allows you to understand the degree of nomophobia. By answering about 20 questions, a person can not only determine how afraid he is of being left without a mobile device, even for a short time, but also find out what exactly he needs from constant use of a smartphone. Among the questions are:

• Do I feel irritated if I can’t consume information from my smartphone when I want to?
• How afraid am I that my smartphone battery will run out?
• If my smartphone loses cellular/data/Wi-Fi signal, do I constantly try to reconnect?
• Am I afraid of getting lost/lost without a smartphone? And so on.

The researchers also ask a person to imagine a situation where he does not have a smartphone with him, or it is dead, or there is no connection, and answer the following questions:

• Am I feeling sad that my family/friends can’t reach me at the moment?
• Am I feeling nervous about being disconnected from my acquaintances at the moment?
• Am I uncomfortable because I can’t check social media for updates?
• Do I feel like I don’t know what to do in these moments?

Scientists believe that by answering all the questions frankly, a person can realize what exactly he is fixated on when using a smartphone. This will help you overcome your phobias on your own or contact a specialist with very specific information about the phobia.

The reason is dissatisfaction

At the end of 2023, scientists from University of Granada (Spain) published the results of a study in which they named the reasons for a person’s excessive attachment to a smartphone: the subjects measured the electrical activity of the skin, which shows the level of activity of the autonomic nervous system. The measurements were made using one of the popular instant messengers.

As part of the experiment, the researchers divided 86 subjects into two groups. People in the first group were asked to send their most frequent contact via Messenger a message that they would be participating in an exciting study about virtual reality. The text of the message was the same for everyone. The other group was not asked to send such messages. Both groups then had to turn off all notifications on their phones and place them face down.

“After that we actually did some virtual reality activity for everyone. After it ended, we made it so that the subjects could not check their smartphones for some time. And then they were still able to pick up their devices and use the messenger,” explains University of Granada professor Jorge Lopez Puga.

Comparing measurements taken throughout the trial, the scientists said that the first group had significantly higher neural activity than those who did not expect any response to their messages about an “interesting, exciting activity.” “We also found that the group who had sent messages beforehand and were unable to use the phone afterwards experienced greater nervousness. When people in the first group received their devices back, they experienced significantly higher neural activity than people in the second group,” the authors note.

In their opinion, the results of the study suggest that mobile phones themselves are not the cause of psychological problems.

The real reason for the painful attachment to them is the expectation of a certain psycho-emotional contact that people can receive with the help of a device without having it in reality.

The thirst for psycho-emotional contacts when discovering something new is also explained at the University of Copenhagen. In October there assumedthat unhealthy attachment to a mobile device is caused not by the arrays of information themselves, but by the easy opportunity to gain new knowledge or experience that modern digital technologies provide.

“When we feel an inner urge to check our email or the latest social media notifications, it is not because we are at the mercy of information. When such an urge comes, we do not even always contact our mobile phone. This feeling arises as a need to gain easy access to a reward such as new information,” says study author Jelle Bruineberg.

The thirst for novelty is, as scientists in the field of cognitive neuroscience believe, the main stimulus for the activity of our consciousness.

Digital technology provides a means of earning such rewards without much effort, with just a few taps on the screen, the author believes.

“If I were in a library, which also contains a huge amount of information, there would be no point in the habit of constantly checking there for the appearance of some new information – after all, such a search requires quite a lot of effort and a lot of time. In addition, new information does not appear in the library as quickly as on the Internet. The combination of factors such as the ease of experiencing novelty and the speed with which new information becomes available creates a habit that causes people to constantly check for “status updates,” “new notifications,” and the like,” he says.

Evgeny Khvostik