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Addicted to your smartphone? 20 question quiz helps to find out

No smartphone equals nomophobia

The condition of feeling anxious without your smartphone (cellphone, mobile) now has a name, it is being called nomophobia, derived from no-mobile-phone-phobia. It’s real for many people – is it for you?

Researchers Caglar Yildirim and Ana-Paula Correia of Iowa State University looked into it and came up with a 20 question quiz to help you determine if your level of anxiety may actually mean you are addicted to your smartphone and have nomophobia.

“People are becoming more and more dependent on and involved with their smartphones,” Yildirim, a doctoral student, told Today Health. “I wanted to dig more into it, in order to better understand why and how it affects people.”

Uses of your smartphone

After interviewing undergraduate students about their smartphone usage, the two researchers came up with four principal areas that concern us when we don’t have our mobiles. Those areas are:

A) We feel we can’t communicate without them. Wanting to text or call friends and family and not being able to do so is frustrating.

B) People feel they’ve lost their ‘connectedness,’ especially if they can’t go on Facebook or Instagram or Twitter. A part of them is gone.

C) Many feel a loss at not being able to get the information they need. Directions, details about a place or person are no longer readily available on Google without a device.

D) There is a great inconvenience to not having your smartphone for all of the above reasons and because making simple plans, like getting a group together for dinner or meeting at a movie theatre, become much more difficult without your smartphone.

From there Yildirim and Correia created the 20 question quiz to determine nomophobia, which, they say, may not be a bad thing. “This dependency and involvement is not something that should be condemned or banned,” Yildirim said. “The problem arises when it starts interfering with one’s mental health and psychological well-being.”

20 question smartphone quiz

Given that some, particularly in the 18-24 year-old age range, are using their phones hundreds of times every single day, sending hundreds of texts alone, maybe, just maybe, there is a dependance that signals an interference with mental health. Still, it’s up to each and every one of us individually to determine if there is a problem and do something about it.

Or not.

Answer each question using a scale of one to seven (1 being strongly disagree, 7 strongly agree). The higher your final tally, the more severe your nomophobia. Though not a part of the study, the Daily Mail in the U.K.came up with some handy numbers to use as a benchmark:

20-60: You have mild nomophobia
60-100: You have moderate nomophobia
100+: You have severe nomophobia

THE 20 QUESTIONS:

1. I would feel uncomfortable without constant access to information through my smartphone.
2. I would be annoyed if I could not look information up on my smartphone when I wanted to do so.
3. Being unable to get the news (e.g., happenings, weather, etc.) on my smartphone would make me nervous.
4. I would be annoyed if I could not use my smartphone and/or its capabilities when I wanted to do so.
5. Running out of battery in my smartphone would scare me.
6. If I were to run out of credits or hit my monthly data limit, I would panic.
7. If I did not have a data signal or could not connect to Wi-Fi, then I would constantly check to see if I had a signal or could find a Wi-Fi network.
8. If I could not use my smartphone, I would be afraid of getting stranded somewhere.
9. If I could not check my smartphone for a while, I would feel a desire to check it.

If I did not have my smartphone with me:

10. I would feel anxious because I could not instantly communicate with my family and/or friends.
11. I would be worried because my family and/or friends could not reach me.
12. I would feel nervous because I would not be able to receive text messages and calls.
13. I would be anxious because I could not keep in touch with my family and/or friends.
14. I would be nervous because I could not know if someone had tried to get a hold of me.
15. I would feel anxious because my constant connection to my family and friends would be broken.
16. I would be nervous because I would be disconnected from my online identity.
17. I would be uncomfortable because I could not stay up-to-date with social media and online networks.
18. I would feel awkward because I could not check my notifications for updates from my connections and online networks.
19. I would feel anxious because I could not check my email messages.
20. I would feel weird because I would not know what to do.

Solutions to nomophobia

So what if you have a severe case of nomophobia? For some the answer will to be to do nothing. Or nothing beyond being diligent about keeping their phone well-charged up and never leaving it behind. They will be comfortable feeling uncomfortable without their phone and do all that they can to have it with them at all times.

Others might choose to wean themselves off of such a dramatic, persistent dependance. However, like all things involving human addiction, changing the habit will take focus and effort, it will require going without something that is helping you get through your day with only a minimum of anxiety.

Good luck.

Oh, and no need to update me on your progress with a call or a text. After all, I should think that not hearing from you will tell me you’re managing just fine.

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