Nomophobia: The Fear of Being Without Your Cell Phone

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Our society is incredibly dependent on technology. Specifically, we are dependent on our cell phones. We always have them on our person, and we use them constantly. Earlier in the semester, my roommate broke her phone, and she was attached at my hip for 3 days because she was afraid of going somewhere without being connected to the world. That’s a prime anecdote that shows how attached our society is becoming to their mobile phones.

Scientists have become interested in what this attachment could mean to the human mind. They have dubbed the term nomophobia which means the fear of losing your cell phone. The four most common cases of nomophobia, according to the link above, result from broken phones, lost phones, stolen phones, and phones without service. But is this a real psychological issue?

Recent studies have looked closer into this issue. Scientific American has broken down nomophobia into two psychological behaviors:

  1. The feeling of anxiety that is experienced when one does not have their phone with them.”I can’t go alone, I don’t have my phone on me!”
  2. The degree to which we depend on our phones to complete basic tasks for us.”When was JFK elected into office?” “I don’t know, let’s check Siri.”

The psychological part of this attachment comes from the idea of transactive memory. This theory indicates that people use each others minds as memory devices. This takes place when you spend a decent amount of time with someone, and you know the subjects that they are knowledgeable about. So, let’s say that my brother is very into football and knows the starting quarterbacks for each team in the NFL. Since he knows this information, I won’t bother to learn who the quarterbacks are, because I can just ask my brother.

Research shows that the concept of transactive memory now applies to our relationship with our cell phones. It is suggested that we have this type of relationship with our phones, and we need it to know so many facts, that without it we become psychologically damaged.

A study done at Iowa State University took 9 undergraduate students from ISU and questioned them on their cell phone use. Questions such as “How would you feel if you left your cell phone at home and had to spend your day without it?” Were asked. Based on the participants answers to the above question and others, the scientists then developed  a questionnaire in order to measure the degrees of nomophobia among these undergraduate students.

This questionnaire asked 301 ISU undergraduate students to rate how much they would agree (on a scale of 1-7) with the 20 statements they were provided. These statements were as such: “If I were to hit my monthly data limit, I would panic.” and “I would feel uncomfortable without constant access to information through my cell phone.”

After the questionnaire was filled out, the participants were put on a scale that measured how “nomophobic” they were. Most of the results fell in the middle of the scale, at about a 3, 4, or 5. Although this shows that people aren’t so incredibly attached to their phones that they would go insane without them, there is definitely reason to believe that people are mentally attached to their smartphones.

However, we must remember that this is a questionnaire study, and not an actual psychoanalysis of what smartphones actually do to the brain. Therefore, it is not as accurate as an experimental study would be. If nomophobia continues to be a popular trend, there is reason to believe that a psychoanalysis will be in the works very soon.

Of course, there have be questions about the truth behind nomophobia. Is it really a phobia, per se? A phobia, as defined by Dictionary.com, is “a persistent, irrational fear of a specific object, activity, or situation that leads to a compelling desire to avoid it.” This sounds pretty intense for most cell phone users. Yes, we are probably more attached to our cell phones than we should be, but do we actually have an irrational psychological fear of going without one? Again, a psychoanalysis could help scientists decide whether or not “phobia” is the right suffix for this issue.

For now, I would suggest turning off your cell phone once in awhile, and just taking in the world as it is.