In an interesting study, SecurEnvoy, a British digital password encryption company, hired polling company OnePull to find out just how attached to their cell phones people have become. This because of articles like this one in AllAboutCounseling, that describe a new kind of fear gripping the land; it’s called nomophobia, literally the fear of having not having access to your cell phone. SecurEnvoy is now reporting that the results of the survey are in, and that fully 66% of those polled answered yes to at least one of the following questions: Do you feel anxious if your cell phone isn’t nearby? Does just the thought of losing your phone make your heart pound? Do you keep an extra phone on hand, just in case your primary phone breaks? Do you sometimes take it to bed with you?
These results are both surprising and not. Surprising because, as the Los Angeles Times reports, a similar survey done just four years ago found the percentage answering yes to such questions was just fifty three percent, and not surprising because it’s obvious to anyone that goes out in public these days that cell phones have become very important to their owners.
Another interesting result found from the survey is that women have apparently become more attached to their phones in the past few years as compared to men. In the survey four years ago, men showed a greater degree of attachment to their phones, and thus a greater fear of losing it than did women. In this new survey, a full 70% of women qualified as nomophoneiacs (fear of having “no mobile phone”) compared to just 61% of men. Though men seem to avert the problem rather than deal with it by owning more than one of them. Also, not surprisingly, young people aged 18 to 24 tend to fear being without their phone more than any other age group, followed by middle aged people, then older people.
SecurEnvoy makes note of another survey done recently by another unnamed company that found that people tend to check their phones on average thirty four times a day. When seen in that light, it’s easy to understand why people would find the absence of their cell phone such a big hole in their life.
As for what to do about the condition, the folks at AllAboutCounseling suggest taking it seriously and trying to get over it using the same methods people use to get over other phobias.