“Smartphones are so central to our lives that being separated from them for any length of time can put people into a high state of anxiety – and the problem, it seems, is only going to get worse,” Tom Bawden reports for The Scotsman. “Researchers have been looking into the reasons for our ‘smartphone separation anxiety’ – known as nomophobia – and found that it has little to do with being unable to make or receive a call.”
“The main reason, they found, is to do with the key role our smartphones play in our overall identity by recording numerous memories that act as an extension of ourselves,” Bawden reports. “For many people, posting about their actions on social media has become a key part of their experience of an event and, in turn, the way they remember them, the study finds. And being without a smartphone means you can’t be posting about your current activities, researchers say.”
“‘As smartphones evoke more personal memories, users extend more of their identity onto them,’ said Dr Ki Joon Kim, of the City University of Hong Kong,” Bawden reports. “‘When users perceive smartphones as their extended selves, they are more likely to become attached to the devices, which, in turn, leads to nomophobia by heightening the phone proximity-seeking tendency,’ he added.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Seems like the problem lies with social media obsessives, not with iPhones and iPhone knockoffs.
BTW, you have to have never used an iPhone to have “smartphone separation anxiety” over some Samsung or other iPhone knockoff. The very idea of being nomophobic over some pretend iPhone from a South Korean dishwasher maker is ludicrous.