Breaking up with your phone can be hard to do—so hard, in fact, that one researcher says it's a phobia.
If separating from your phone puts you on the verge of a full-on breakdown, you might have what Caglar Yildirim, a doctoral student in human-computer interaction at Iowa State University, calls nomphobia, or fear of separation from your mobile phone.
Yildirim and ISU education professor Ana-Paula Correia developed a questionnaire, first published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior, to gauge just how anxious people would become if they parted with their phones.
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The questionnaire gauges four dimensions of emotional dependency on a phone using a basic agree-disagree scale. The survey presents various scenarios—"running out of battery in my smartphone would scare me," for example—and asks people to rate the statements on a scale of 1 ("strongly disagree") to 7 ("strongly agree"). The higher the score, the more severe the emotional reaction.
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When Yildrim canvassed the ISU campus, the survey findings initially startled him.
“I was shocked by how many times people will say, ‘I will feel naked if I don’t have my phone with me today,’” said Yildrim. “We’ve become so dependent on our smart phones, we’re trying to fight the unhealthy dependence.”
For a more in-depth look into the research that was conducted by Yildrim and Correia, check out the below video from Iowa State.
