Dubai: Checking your social media feed even before you get out of bed, not being able to resist the lure of the notification light or hearing your phone ring even when no one is calling. Heavy users of mobile phones are often very aware of their level of dependance on their devices.
What they might not be aware of — or comfortable accepting — is that if they were separated from their phones, they would end up suffering from anxiety.
A 2015 study conducted by the University of Missouri, US, found that cell phone separation had serious psychological and physiological effects on iPhone users, including poor performance on cognitive tests.
“The results from our study suggest that iPhones are capable of becoming an extension of our selves such that when separated, we experience a lessening of ‘self’ and a negative physiological state,” Russell Clayton, a doctoral candidate at the Missouri School of Journalism in the US, and lead author of the study, said in an official statement from the university.
While most readers we spoke with did not agree that they suffered from phone separation anxiety, a Gulf News Twitter poll showed slightly different results. When asked how long they could stay away from their phones without feeling anxious, only a quarter said they could do so for over five hours. Almost a third could not make it for even an hour and around one in 10 readers conceded that it was simply impossible for them to be away from their phones.
“I think everybody has gone through this in the ‘smartphone era’. You get very anxious, especially when you are expecting an important message,” Zainab Das, a public relations professional living in Dubai, said.
“If you leave your phone at home, it can make you anxious. Sometimes, when I go out and forget the phone at home, I realise I would now have to spend almost half a day without my phone — it’ll definitely drive a person mad. ‘Who must have messaged?’, ‘Did someone call?’ or ‘Is my phone really at home? Have I misplaced it?’ You almost have panic attacks,” she added.
For stay-at-home mum and Dubai resident, Pamela Nazareth, while being away from her phone does not necessarily cause anxiety, having it around can lead to obsessive checking.
“I use Facebook really late at night because that’s the time I can really sit with my phone. If I’ve checked my phone at 10.30pm, I’ll check again at 10.35pm. And then it gets worse, from five to three to every two minutes, I keep checking. And then I realise — it’s not like people constantly post updates and it’s not like every post is great, right? I’m just bored and I’m trying to fill my time with this,” she said.
“Our smartphones make us anxious and that anxiety then gets in the way of our performance and our relationships,” Dr Larry Rosen, an expert on the psychology behind technology, wrote in an article for US-based publication Psychology Today.
“Countless studies show that people are switching from one task to another every three to five minutes and the stimulus for those switches is, most often, an alert or notification from their omnipresent smartphone ... I realise that we are all facing a very difficult task of disentangling ourselves from an affliction that is rapidly approaching an anxiety disorder,” Dr Rosen wrote.
As someone who works in the field of information technology (IT), Gulf News reader Malcolm Fernandes has observed the negative affects of obsessive gadget use on the mind and bodies of the people around him. He, too, has had to make a concerted effort to limit his mobile phone use, making sure he does not use social media on the device. Yet, phone separation anxiety persists.
“If I have stepped out of the house and reached somewhere, and realise I don’t have my phone with me, I just have to go back and get it. The fact that I am just unable to receive any messages or calls does make me feel anxious,” he said.
While people can present the argument that being away from one’s phone can affect their work, Fernandes felt that was simply an excuse.
“That’s something I’m trying to discipline myself on. These things can easily be done, it just needs discipline. It’s not really mandatory to be on your phone if you’re a professional. I am an IT guy, so if anyone would argue that it is necessary for work, it would be me. But I realise the dangers of it — I can see a child and his father not communicating because they are on their devices,” he added.
If you don’t know how heavy a user you are, download an app that monitors how often you check your phone in a day. The results might surprise you and it might just be the first step to finding a solution for a problem you never thought you had.
— The writer is a freelance journalist with Gulf News
