Search icon

Health

15th Oct 2019

Feel anxious when you’re away from your phone? Congrats, you’ve got nomophobia

Jade Hayden

You’re not alone, friend.

Picture the scene: you’re out and about.

You’re alone. Your phone suddenly dies or is lost or you realise that you’ve left it at home.

You feel anxious, you feel naked, you feel like everybody in the entire world is going to be trying to get in contact with you now, even though in reality, chances are nobody is.

You’ve got nomophobia – and lads, you’re not the only one.

According to new research, 53 percent of people now have a fear of being without their mobile phones, whether that be because they’ve run out of battery or because they simply forgot to bring the thing.

A new survey conducted by True Solicitors showed that the majority of people can’t be away from their devices without feeling anxious about it.

One of those people is a woman named Nicki, who isn’t just always on her phone for personal use but because she runs her business from it.

“I am terrible with my phone but, unfortunately, I run 90 percent of my business through it,” she said.

“My friends and family do get cross at times with me when my phone is always going off, so I do try hard to switch off. At least until after 5pm until my son goes to sleep at half eight, but it is so hard to do that at times.”

But nomophobia isn’t the only way that mobile phones have changed our lives – as it turns out, the devices are also causing a lot of us serious back problems.

According to the British Chiropractic Association (BCA), three in five people in the UK have experienced back and neck pain after using phones, tablets and other devices.

The BCA even found that over the past five years, this type of pain has increased from nine percent to 49 percent.

And despite this, just 27 percent of people said that they would stop using their device to improve their health.

Same, tbh.