Nomophobia
March 31st, 2008 - 2:24 pm
Getting married, starting a job or going to the dentist have long been recognised as sources of great stress.
But it seems they are now matched by a new, peculiarly 21st century affliction - the fear of being out of mobile phone contact.
Millions apparently suffer from “no mobile phobia” which has been given the name nomophobia.
I know people like this. They completely freak out if they can’t get a signal or their battery starts to get low, no matter where they are, what they are doing, or if they think they might need to make a call any time soon. Pure panic at the thought that they might not be able to make or receive calls for a little while, and they aren’t young folk who have always known and had cell phone either. Nope, they are people just like me who remember a day and age when we didn’t even have answering machines. If you weren’t home, you weren’t home, and we didn’t have to have conversations with friends and family while we were doing the shopping or driving down the highway. Why some of us even lived without any phone at all, and somehow we survived just fine!
Researchers advise those keen to avoid nomophobia to keep their credit topped up, carry a charger at all times, give family and friends an alternative contact number and carry a pre-paid phonecard to make emergency calls if your mobile is broken, lost or stolen.
Sure, those are good ways to avoid the symptoms of this ridiculous phobia, but it’s not going to stop a person from having it, which I think should be the goal. This advice is like telling someone who is afraid of heights to not go up high or someone with agoraphobia to just stay home. Most shrinks would agree, I think, that while that advice might keep these people from experiencing their fear, it does nothing at all for the root cause.
How to get over nomophobia? Turn off your phone. Occasionally leave the house without it. Leave it in the glovebox when you go shopping. Ignore it, even if it is ringing. Stop talking on it while operating heavy machinery … like your car. Realize you don’t have to be in contact or constantly contactable 24/7/365. The world will not end if your best friend has to wait a few hours to tell you about her latest fight with her boyfriend. Silence is a freaking blessing in the world today, and being out of touch from time to time even more so.
Personally, I think every young person should have to live without any phone at all for a couple of years. It teaches you to be resourceful and self-sufficient, and it brings home quite clearly what phone calls are actually important and which are not when you have to get yourself to a pay phone every time you want to make a call. I speak from experience.
Now fear of lack of internet, shall we call it nonetphobia? Yeah, that I have, but even when the internet is out for a while, after the initial shock of not being able to be on line passes, I find I do just fine without it as well. 
6 Responses to “Nomophobia”
Hey Orbie what does that make me then? I really have no fear of cell phones because I don’t own one, don’t want to own one, and have no desire to. My wife owns and uses one, but I find it much more peaceful not to deal with them.
Yes when my wife and I are out and about someone will call on her cell phone and sometime she asks me to answer it for her, but if it wasn’t for just flipping it open to do so I would be lost on how to even answer the thing and as far as me making a call on one forget it. If I do she has to dial the number for me. My grown children and grandchildren call me an old Dinosaur and they say I will go the way of the Dinosaurs if I don’t catch up to the times. They can say what they want to, but I just don’t want to come to depend on one the way a lot of people do. Maybe I am too much of a survivalist to depend on mechanical high tech things. If I wanted to learn how to use one it would happen, but in some natural disaster I wouldn’t want to think a cell phone would turn out to be something my life depended on and end up losing my life because I couldn’t get a signal or the batteries were drained.
I didn’t want a cell phone. Oh sure, I have gotten used to it, but there is nothing wrong with a land line and just not being home when it rings. But Lin needs one for work, and it made no sense to pay two phone bills, so I ended up with a cell phone.
At first, I always felt like I had to take it with me, and then I went through a stage where I conveniently forgot it at home all the time, and now I tend to toss it in the truck but not actually carry it around. I could live without it. Mostly, it’s a bother and just one more thing to keep track of when I am out and about.
Someday I hope to have a land line again and hold a comfortably sized actual phone handset to my ear rather than these microscopic things they are coming out with. I mean, I love my cell phone, because it is pretty cool, but any conversation longer than two minutes and that tiny little thing gets uncomfortable!
Not to mention the studies demonstrating possible effects of microwave radiation on one’s brain.
Well, yes, there’s that too.
I had a text pager for years. Why can’t people make a mobile phone without the whole microphone / speaker mess? Just text message everyone and if they want to talk with their mouth using words they can wait until you’re somewhere you want to talk to people from.
I only got the thing because people were constantly moaning that I’d forgotten something trivial and it meant that I could ask why they didn’t page me if it was that important.
Text pagers are great. In fact, I use my cell phone more for sending text messages than anything. Most often it’s single words sent to my husband … like “Beer?” meaning does he want me to get beer at the store or “Sonic?” meaning can we please, please, please have burgers for dinner.
Being able to text people on my phone has cut the amount of time I spend actually talking on it.
I think my mom is developing nomophobia though. I swear if she doesn’t have at least three bars of reception, she calls to ask what’s wrong with her phone, and heaven forbid she has to send a text message twice because she has a weak signal. I somewhat regret getting it for her, but both our phone bills are nicely small now that all communication between us and her is free. I guess that’s a good trade-off for a cell phone addicted mom.