Suffering from 'missing smartphone anxiety'?

We are living in a time when smartphone addiction among the millennials has become a raging debate. To find out whether you suffer from this addiction or not, here are symptoms to help you identify this modern-day phobia: the fear of being without your mobile phone.

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To gauge if you are suffering from nomophobia (missing smartphone fear), scientists from Iowa State University have developed a set of questions to help you identify if you suffer from this.

In the study, participants were asked to respond to statements on a scale of one (strongly disagree) to seven (strongly agree).

They interviewed nine students about their smartphone experiences and then developed a questionnaire based on these responses that was tested on 301 other students.

Caglar Yildirim, a PhD student in human computer interaction at Iowa State University (ISU), and Ana-Paula Correia, an associate professor at ISU's School of Education, identified four dimensions of this modern-day phobia.

These are as follows:

1) The fear of losing connectedness;

2) Not being able to communicate;

3) Not being able to access information and;

4) Giving up the convenience

The questionnaire includes statements such as “I would feel uncomfortable without constant access to information through my smartphone” or “I would be annoyed if I could not look up information on my smartphone when I wanted to”.

It also had questions like “Being unable to get the news (eg happenings, weather, etc) on my smartphone would make me nervous" or “I would be annoyed if I could not use my smartphone and/or its capabilities when I wanted to".

“Running out of battery in my smartphone would scare me", “If I were to run out of credits or hit my monthly data limit, I would panic" and “If I did not have a data signal or could not connect to Wi-Fi, then I would constantly check to see if I had a signal or could find a Wi-Fi network” were other questions on the list.

Participants also answered statements like “If I could not use my smartphone, I would be afraid of being stranded somewhere” and “If I could not check my smartphone for a while, I would feel a desire to check it”.

Another section of the questionnaire asked participants how they would react if they did not have their smartphone with them.

They responded to the statements like “I would feel anxious because I could not instantly communicate with my family and/or friends” and “I would feel nervous because I would not be able to receive text messages and calls.”

The team then calculated total scores by adding the responses to each item.

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The higher scores corresponded to greater nomophobia severity, the team noted in a paper published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior.