Are you a nomophobic?

Nomophobia is the inexplicable and illogical fear of being without a mobile phone.

Each time you get an e-mail, it’s a positive feedback that you’re an important person- Kristina Chetcuti

Your first thought on reading this, is: “Pah! What sort of phobia is this?” But your next thought is: “Hang on, where did I leave my mobile? My mate/mother/Franco Debono/ lov­er, might text and I won’t hear it.”

So you are now putting down this newspaper and picking up your land­line to call yourself, and you find your mobile buried somewhere under the Classified and cereal box.

And now you’re back and you’re thinking: “Nah, this topic is not for me, let me read Sylvanus.” Halt! Because this does concern you: based on statistics, you and I are bound to be nomophobic.

The term was coined recently by British experts who first came across this kind of exaggerated fear in 2008. Then, 50 per cent of mobile users admitted to feelings of anxiety when they ran out of battery or credit, lost their phone, or had no network coverage. Now, four years later, it’s gone up to 70 per cent.

The study says stress levels induced by nomophobia compare with those of wedding day jitters and trips to dentists.

We don’t have equivalent Maltese statistics. But given that according to the National Office of Statistics, the mobile penetration rate indicates that a considerable number of people have more than one mobile, I would say we’re up there with our nomophobic British counterparts.

I’d like to say that I’m indifferent to my mobile phone and only look for it when I need to make an essential call. But I don’t. I break into a sweat when I’m in the car and realise I left my phone behind me, because I know this will be the day when I’ll get two flat tyres in torrential rain weather. And it is.

Now I’m panicking that I’m a nomophobic. “No you aren’t,” said a colleague, “But it looks like I definitely am – I even sleep with it under my pillow at night, just in case.”

Then there’s another side-effect to the affliction: the checking. A study in a computing journal shows that on average, smartphone users check their mobiles 34 times per day.

These ‘checking habits’, essentially repetitive checks of e-mail and other applications such as Facebook, are apparently “extremely common”. Loren Frank, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Francisco, calls the checks “unconscious behaviour”, typically lasting less than 30 seconds.

“Each time you get an e-mail, it’s a small jolt, a positive feedback that you’re an important person,” he writes. “It’s a bit like an addiction.”

Hmm. As I am typing this, I check my e-mail 10 times. Each time I hear the ping, I notice I am eager to open the mailbox. But be still my beating heart: one is my Vodafone bill, the other a ‘Save the Rhine’ petition, and the other an update on ‘Today’s Quilting Needs’. I cannot risk any more: I have to fight the mere possibility of a phobia on the horizon.

But how? In the UK, some ye ole’ pubs are actually banishing mobile phones. Like in the Old Wild West where you had you check your gun at the saloon entrance, they have a basket by the door, and you drop off your device there.

So I put a wicker basket by the door. Next to my Samsung, there are 23-and-a-half plastic toy mobile phones belonging to my daughter, who is taking the task very seriously.

Unfortunately, piled up as they are, they keep setting off and every now and then we’re regaled to cacophonous ensembles of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and that Barney blarney in bleep formats.

That’s when I start dreaming of fleeing to an olive grove and living a life picking olives, with not a gadget within earshot. I decide to start preparing myself for the eventuality.

First things first: I start switching off my mobile phone at regular intervals, I check my inbox three times a day and I deactivate my Facebook account. “Strange course to take en route to an olive grove,” noted a friend. Indeed, one has to start weaning oneself off the luxuries of life. Next in line: showering al fresco.

And now that I got your attention, you may proceed to Sylvanus.

krischetcuti@gmail.com