The Nomophobia Test: Fear of Being Without Your Mobile Phone

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:

1. not being able to communicate,
2. losing connectedness,
3. not being able to access information,
4. 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:

1. I would feel uncomfortable without constant access to information through my smartphone.
2. I would be annoyed if I could not look information up on my smartphone when I wanted to do so.
3. Being unable to get the news (e.g., happenings, weather, etc.) on my smartphone would make me nervous.
4. I would be annoyed if I could not use my smartphone and/or its capabilities when I wanted to do so.
5. Running out of battery in my smartphone would scare me.
6. If I were to run out of credits or hit my monthly data limit, I would panic.
7. 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.
8. If I could not use my smartphone, I would be afraid of getting stranded somewhere.
9. 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:

1. I would feel anxious because I could not instantly communicate with my family and/or friends.
2. I would be worried because my family and/or friends could not reach me.
3. I would feel nervous because I would not be able to receive text messages and calls.
4. I would be anxious because I could not keep in touch with my family and/or friends.
5. I would be nervous because I could not know if someone had tried to get a hold of me.
6. I would feel anxious because my constant connection to my family and friends would be broken.
7. I would be nervous because I would be disconnected from my online identity.
8. I would be uncomfortable because I could not stay up-to-date with social media and online networks.
9. I would feel awkward because I could not check my notifications for updates from my connections and online networks.
10. I would feel anxious because I could not check my email messages.
11. 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