Nomophobia – The Fear You Didn’t Know You Had

Nomophobia – The Fear You Didn’t Know You Had – by Liam Sweeny.

Ladies and gentlemen and all in-between; friends and neighbors and members of the jury, I bring before you… the new year. I know, I’m a little late – Father Time parties on New Year’s Eve too. But here it is, this year, shiny and new, without a single odd thing about it.

Oh, really? Damn. Okay, so there is an odd thing. And now that I know it, you will too. My column is the communicable disease of columns.

I know, too much sizzle, no steak. So I want you to feast on the newest phobia – nomophobia. I doubt this one’s going to be an insult tossed, because according to experts in the know, three out of four people show symptoms of this phobia.

So what is nomophobia? Fear of being without your smartphone.

Yeah. That’s a phobia now. And the word was coined in 2008, so they’ve known about it.

Nomophobia (from “no mobile phone – bia) is when you get anxious and agitated when you don’t have your smartphone on you. Anxiety, agitation, disorientation, trembling – as crazy as a phobia like this sounds, isn’t it about right? Your kid goes one-hundred percent ballistic when you take their phone away at the dinner table. Outside of the club, everybody is nose deep – not even smoking cigarettes outside anymore, just lost in the feeds.

Since the experts say that almost everyone has it a little, I have to admit I am a mild nomophone. Really, I just have no patience with the drama of some idiot couple in the waiting room of whatever doctor’s office I’m at. Hear about “Lifestyles of the Cheats and Crackheads,” or go in my phone and check out some heckin chonkers? I think it should be a principle that when you talk about someone who can’t let go of their phone, maybe ask if it’s the best thing they got going on. After all, nobody yells at their cheating ex on Instagram. And when they do, it’s hilarious.

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