Certainly, I have friends who experience something akin to panic attacks when separated from their mobile or a phone signal. One highly intelligent pal says: “My heart starts beating faster and I can’t think of anything else until I have found it again.”
“Numerous times I’ve emptied a bag all over the floor after missing my phone for a few seconds,” says another.
But such frantic reactions do not qualify as a phobia, according to Nicky Lidbetter, chief executive officer of the charity Anxiety UK. “A phobia constitutes an irrational fear out of all proportion to the circumstances – it has to be very intense to be considered an anxiety disorder,” he says. For an example of a true phobia, try trypanophobia (fear of hypodermic needles). Few of us look forward to medical injections, but the fear felt by trypanophobes is so severe that they would rather avoid treatment, whatever the risks to their health.
Nomophobia is not listed in any diagnostic manual, but the term does appear in medical texts. In March 2010, doctors at the University of Rio de Janeiro described one case of nomophobia, which they refer to as “the pathologic fear of remaining out of touch with technology” – but they concluded that the patient’s dependence on his mobile was linked to a pre-existing panic disorder.
Lidbetter agrees that such symptoms may be linked to other anxiety disorders, such as agoraphobia. “Sufferers of these conditions rely heavily on mobiles, and if they cannot make contact with carers it can trigger a full-blown panic attack.”
Nomophobia hype or not, our growing dependence on technology is making us more neurotic, says Thomas Stewart, from the British Psychological Society. “We have trained ourselves to be in constant communication. If we don’t get an instant response we worry.”
The latest survey also found that 41 per cent of us now carry around two mobile phones (one of which is often described as “for work”). Paradoxically, our fear of not being in touch heightens anxiety levels to such a degree that we now have to maintain constant interaction with professional as well as private contacts.
“People with 'work mobiles’ are so used to responding immediately to texts and emails from friends at all times that they accept the idea of doing the same with work messages, meaning they never stop working,” says Lynne Coventry, director of Psychology and Communication Technology at the University of Northumbria. Some companies in Germany and elsewhere, she says, now cut off employee access to work emails via their mobiles after working hours to enforce a break from technology and reduce stress levels.
Perhaps we nomophobics can learn a lesson here. Imposing time slots for communication will not only make us less stressed, but also less susceptible to the fear of being separated from our beloved mobiles.
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