By ROSIE WATERLAND
Are you nomophobic? Or are you living with one?
A recent study in the UK has revealed that 53% of mobile phone users get anxiety if they run out of battery or have no network coverage, so the scientists involved coined the clever term ‘nomophobia’ (no-mobile-phone-phobia… Get it? ZING!) to describe the desperados who can’t go five minutes without a working phone.
We’ve developed a handy list to help you identify whether you, or anyone you may know, is a nomophobe:
1. They have a sixth sense… For network coverage.
If you know a nomophobe, it’s not unusual to see the following: They are walking pleasantly down the street. All of a sudden, they stop dead in their tracks. They slowly look around. They sniff the air. They look as if they may be having some kind of spiritual connection with nature.
Then fear creeps across their face. They turn to you – slowly, dramatically – and with complete sincerity and impending doom they say: “There’s no network coverage here.”
2. They are constantly jonesing for a cord fix.
“Who has a charger cord? Do have a charger cord? Anybody know where I can get a charger cord? Can I borrow that cord? I swear it’s just for five minutes, I swear. Does that cord fit my phone? Will that slot into my laptop? That’s a damn fine cord, where do I get me one of those? I’ll give you ten bucks for that cord. Okay, 15. JUST GIVE ME THE FREAKING CORD.”
3. They have super-human vision. But only when looking for power outlets.
The nomophobe could be legally blind but still able to spot a power outlet from 50 metres away. They can also walk into a room and know within 0.35 seconds where every powerpoint in the room is located and whether they could fit a charger in there.
4. They have a seventh sense… For battery percentages
They can feel it in the very core of their being. The dread starts to flutter in the pit of their stomach: Their battery is getting low. Someone could offer the nomohobe a thousand bucks to use their phone when it’s below 10% and they’d refuse. And watching a video? DON’T EVEN.
People with this seventh sense also seem to be part of a strange phenomenon in which the amount of times one needs to check one’s phone gets higher as the battery gets lower. It can’t be explained by logic or reason. It’s just an involuntary need. Many nomophobes have likened it to that thing called ‘breathing’.
