Take the test for ‘nomophobia’: short for “no-mobile-phone phobia”.
Psychologists have developed a test for nomophobia: the fear of being without your phone.
Nomophobia is short for “no-mobile-phone phobia”.
The researchers found four aspects to nomophobia:
- not being able to communicate,
- losing connectedness,
- not being able to access information,
- and giving up convenience.
People in the study responded to the statements below on a scale of 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree).
You can add up your total score, by adding your responses to each item.
The higher the score, the more you ‘suffer’ from nomophobia.
Here are the statements:
- I would feel uncomfortable without constant access to information through my smartphone.
- I would be annoyed if I could not look information up on my smartphone when I wanted to do so.
- Being unable to get the news (e.g., happenings, weather, etc.) on my smartphone would make me nervous.
- I would be annoyed if I could not use my smartphone and/or its capabilities when I wanted to do so.
- 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.
- 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.
- If I could not use my smartphone, I would be afraid of getting stranded somewhere.
- If I could not check my smartphone for a while, I would feel a desire to check it.
If I did not have my smartphone with me:
- I would feel anxious because I could not instantly communicate with my family and/or friends.
- I would be worried because my family and/or friends could not reach me.
- I would feel nervous because I would not be able to receive text messages and calls.
- I would be anxious because I could not keep in touch with my family and/or friends.
- I would be nervous because I could not know if someone had tried to get a hold of me.
- I would feel anxious because my constant connection to my family and friends would be broken.
- I would be nervous because I would be disconnected from my online identity.
- I would be uncomfortable because I could not stay up-to-date with social media and online networks.
- I would feel awkward because I could not check my notifications for updates from my connections and online networks.
- I would feel anxious because I could not check my email messages.
- I would feel weird because I would not know what to do.
The study was published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior (Yildrim et al., 2015).
Phone anxiety image from Shutterstock
