Mobile phones have over only a few decades revolutionized how we communicate, interact, search for information, work, do chores, and pass time. The development of the smartphone with its multitude of functions, increased memory capacity and speed, and constant connectedness to the internet, has increased the time spent using the phone, implying a near ubiquitous usage. This fast development with changed exposure patterns has raised questions about potential health effects of the exposure.
In the study “Mobile Phone Use and Mental Health. A Review of the Research That Takes a Psychological Perspective on Exposure” carried out by the Department of Psychology of the University of Gothenburg in 2018, After reviewing more than 4000 articles written since 2017, it is concluded that a high quantity of mobile phone use was associated with a wide range of mental health outcomes, such as depressive symptoms and sleep problems. A dominating research field was excessive or problematic use, i.e., where intense mobile phone use is described as a behavioral addiction and/or pathological. A large amount of instruments to measure excessive or problematic use occurred, and problematic use was associated with several adverse outcomes, such as depression, anxiety, and sleep problems.
FEAR OF MISSING OUT
A 2016 study in Computers in Human Behavior, Titled "Fear of Missing out, need for touch, anxiety and depression are related to problematic smartphone use," set out to explore previously reported causality between “problematic smartphone use and severity of depression and anxiety symptoms.” A total of 308 university students—165 men and 143 women—answered a questionnaire that assessed their mental health, their cell phone and Internet usage, and the reasons they used them.
People who scored higher on scales known as “fear of missing out” (you know—FOMO) and “need for touch” were more likely to overuse their phones. And those who overused their phones were more likely to score higher on the depression and anxiety scales, possibly because, according to the study, problematic smartphone use “may interfere with other pleasurable activities and disrupt social activities, thereby reducing behavioral activation and subsequently increasing depression.”
The symptoms of FOMO
Some users may not realize the importance of putting mobile and social networks on their site and that they are beginning to suffer from the symptoms of nomophobia, and for that reason it is convenient to identify those symptoms to try to act as soon as possible against this disorder We highlight some of them.
1. Constant search for network coverage: mobile addicts often have a kind of sixth sense to detect that in certain locations mobile coverage is limited or nil. In those situations, they will try to search at all times for those nearby places where they can at least have some connectivity.
2. A plug always at hand: to be able to charge the mobile in case the battery runs out is essential for these users, and for that reason as soon as they arrive at a new place where they will spend several hours they “scan” that place to check If there is a plug to which you can connect the mobile.
3. Battery analysts: closely related to the above, those affected by nomophobia constantly take into account the percentage of battery left in their devices. They are usually experts in estimating how much life they have left and when they will need to connect to an outlet to recharge their phones.
4. The mobile always at hand, but without seeing them: these users also have a unique nervous tic: they do not stop checking the mobile screen to see if there have been updates of their social networks or they receive messages or calls of another type. The problem is that most of the time they don't do it openly. They hide the gesture and the mobile to consult that state silently and they do it very frequently.
5. They don't like new sites: having to go to a site they don't know can be fatal: there may be no coverage or there may not be a plug nearby. Total disaster. The routine, what works, is especially interesting for these users who need to be connected always and everywhere.
REFERENCES
Thomée, S. (2018). Mobile Phone Use and Mental Health. A Review of the Research That Takes a Psychological Perspective on Exposure. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.