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Nomophobia

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There’s something about the weight of my iphone in my hand. It’s reassuring, like an anchor to the rest of the world.
Occasionally I misplace my cellphone — later I find in buried in the sheets of my bed, or accidentally left in the car. But a panic envelops me until I find it. My chest tightens, I start to sweat, and terrible thoughts fill my head. What if I left it on top of my car and drove off? What if I put it down somewhere when I was shopping?

It’s only after my perfect little smart phone is back, balanced in the palm of my hand, that I realize how irrational and ridiculous my reaction had been. Regardless, at least once a month I go through the same episode.

Curious about my silly fear, I put “anxiety about losing cell phone” into Google’s omnipotent search engine. Pages of results popped up. I quickly learned I was not alone in my reaction. In fact, my fear has a name, “nomophobia” (fear of no mobile phone). A British team of researchers coined the name, and “experts say nomophobia could affect up to 53 percent of mobile phone users” according to the British paper Daily Mail.

Millions of people? And here I thought I was original. Huffington Post author Barbara Greenberg described the feeling in a similar way: “I am referring to the level of anxiety that makes you feel like you are alone, disconnected and sinking into quicksand.”

But nomophobia does not just apply to losing your cellphone. It also encompasses the fear of breaking your cellphone, and the fear of being without reception.

With my phone sitting right next to me on the desk, I try to break this fear down in a rational sense. It’s just a piece of metal and plastic. Expensive, but completely replaceable. It does not, and should not have an elevated importance. But it’s the constant need to be plugged into… well, everything: Facebook, Twitter, messages, phone calls, etc., that makes it seem irreplaceable.

Let’s be honest though. My life is important to me, and the few close people surrounding me. I’m not an important public individual. If I needed to go for a day, a week, or even a month without a cellphone, I could. Probably the most important thing I would miss is a text messages from friends telling me which bar they are currently at.


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