A conversation with one of my colleagues steered towards a discussion an addiction to mobile phone use. In fact, when I reflected on it later, I recalled that when I leave house for work, I check my pockets to ensure that I have carried my mobile phone. It is become a routine. If I have forgotten it, something feels missing. And when I realize that I have forgotten my mobile phone and I am far away to return to get it, I catch myself cursing me. I feel uncontactable (as if mobile phone is the only way to contact me), unconnected, incomplete, hampered, inconvenienced, in short, debilitated. This dependency on the mobile phone and the related anxiety without it is going unnoticed in people’s lives.
It is not just me. Nomophobia is on the rise. Nomophobia (No Mo-bile Phone Phobia) is a term that describes a phenomenon notices in people where they fear being without a mobile phone or without mobile phone contact. It is a type of psychological and physical dependency on the mobile phone. Numerous research studies are being carried out on this subject.
Do you think that you could be part of this statistic? I tried the following three tactics to start with, to detox myself of this phobia. It indeed helped. Now I feel I do not miss much if I do not have my mobile phone with me during these times. Not a bad beginning, I think. So here are my methods. You can try these or think of your own.
- Get a real alarm. Keep the mobile phone 5 feet away from your bed at night.
- Keep the mobile phone away when you are eating your meals.
- Set times when you will use your mobile phone.
Do send it your replies with ways that you think will be helpful for a detox from nomophobia.
Here’s a video that lends some insight:
phones drive us 
Last year, I put some students (all teenagers) through the ‘Nomophobia’ game. They had to place all their phones at the centre of the table and carry on a normal conversation with the person on their left for 10 mins without touching their phone. It was sadistically enjoyable watching them twitch and going cold-turkey whenever their phones lit up with all the phone alerts 😏
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LOL, I am familiar with the phobia; but am overcoming it slowly. One tactic that helped me was to change my greeting. It now tells callers that I may not respond right away – somehow that made it easier to set the phone aside during movies etc.. The other tactic that is helping is to have a unique ring for people that I don’t want to send to voicemail (like my 85 year old Dad!). Knowing that I’ll be cued to the critical calls makes it easier to let other calls go to voicemail.
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