Toxic Relationship with the Mobile Phone

Do you panic when your phone is out of battery or coverage?

I Do!!

One day I sat down to think why I panic that much. Million questions popped up in my head.

Is it because my whole life depends on it?

Is it because I feel disconnected?

List went on and on…..

I turned to my best friend Google to solve the puzzle. After a bit of reading, I came across this interesting term.

Nomophobia — Smart Phone Seperation Anxiety

“Nomophobia is referring to the feeling of panic and stress that many people experience when they don’t have access to their smartphone.”

This is how the term “Nomopbobia” derives.

“no-mobile-phone phobia.”

What an interesting term!!!!

My next concern was “Do I have nomophobia?” As funny as my concern sounds, I understood it is something to be looked at very seriously. After a thorough reading of many days I understood that,

I am more than qualified to be Nomophobic!!

I know what you are thinking? how would you know whether you have nomophobia?

While nomophobia is not a clinical diagnosis, some of the commonly identified symptoms are as following,

1. The inability to turn off your phone
2. Constantly checking your phone for missed messages, emails, or call
3. Charging your battery even when your phone is almost fully charge
4. Taking your phone with you everywhere you go, even into the bathroom
5. Repeatedly checking to make sure that you have your phone
6. Fear of being without Wifi or being able to connect to a cellular data network
7. Worrying about negative things happening and not being able to call for help
8. Stress over being disconnected from one’s online presence or identity
9. Skipping activities or planned events in order to spend time on the mobile device

Sounds familiar? Well, you are not alone.

You and I are not the only ones experiencing these. There are statistics that proves many people having the same symptoms.

All of these statistics were from other countries. I couldn’t find statistics from Sri Lanka. I decided to collect data from a sample of people to analyse the situation in Sri Lanka.

Nomophobia in Sri Lanka

I sent out a questionnaire and received 133 responses. Results gave me very interesting insight to Sri Lankan context.

Let’s look at the statistics!!

47% of the respondents check their phone every five minutes. Out of these respondents more than 50% are students who are undergraduates or in High school.

How often fo you check your phone?

Why do we have to look at our phones every 5 minutes? I used do this when I am free at home but later I realised it is just another way of wasting my time. This is why we have ringing tones, alerts, previews etc. on phones. If it rings and if its important we can attend to it. Think for your self. Do you really have to check your phone often? It is a choice you can make.

Next is one of the most interesting terms we have been hearing for a while. “Screen Time”.

If you haven’t ever checked this, please do! It might surprise you!!

I kept tabs on my screen time for quite some time. And I have been on an average of 3–5 hours for the past year. Ever since the pandemic started, I was on a failed mission of reducing my screen time.

However, when I started analysing the results of the survey, It took me by surprise that 7% of the respondents spend “more than 10 hours of screen time”. That is almost half a day!!

I deeply regret about not asking them about the most frequently used apps.

Following is the summary of the results.

What is your average screen time?

Getting to the main question I was thriving to answer at the beginning, why are we this scared to not have a switched on phone with coverage ?

Majority of the people responded saying that they, have a fear of “Not being able to communicate with others”. and “ Not being able to access information”Well I do agree. Question is, it a necessary fear?

If we don’t text someone for an hour or two, if we don’t check instagram or facebook to see what others are doing with their lives, does it really affect us?

Food for thought guys!!

What is your greatest fear of being without the phone?

Let’s look at the results of how much people panic!!

Panic if your mobile phone is out of battery — 23.3%

Panic if you don’t have coverage — 42.4%

Ask your self? Honestly, when your phone was out of battery or coverage for an hour, whats the worst thing that happened? Did you miss a very important message on life or death situation?

Want to relive the situation, switch it off for an hour !!

You woudn’t panic, as you are doing this with conscious of knowing you can switch it on any time. But you can see what you miss for an hour and are those things really important to your life?

I am going to bore you with last few statistic. While 73.5% of the respondents never switch off their phone, 43.6% respondents take the phone to the bathroom. 67.7% respondents sleep next to the smart phone. From these results its quite evident that,

Majority of us are in a toxic relationship with our mobile phone!!

This needs awareness among people and it is a concern we have to take care at a individual level. After-all, like we do for toxic relationships with humans, we can’t really get rid of the mobile phones as they are essential to our day to day life. With the pandemic, mobile devices have become more essential. Our income, education etc depends on the mobile devices. But, as we all know, “Too much of anything is not good”

So, what do we do to mange this toxic relationship? I will meet you with another article to discuss that. Also, For the fans of statistics, I will be writing an in detail article with an analysis of the results later. Stay tuned!