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Even more than dark subways or stale bagels, New Yorkers fear being phoneless.
Nomophobia, the fear of being without your mobile phone, is the No. 1 “unusual fear” in New York, according to a new report citing Google search metrics.
Hyper-connected New Yorkers “see their phones as an extension of themselves,” said Kent State University professor Andrew Lapp, who studies addictions to cell phones and social media. “It makes sense that leaving your phone behind feels like leaving a part of yourself behind.”
New Jerseyans, on the other hand, are more concerned about the cruelly named hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia. That’s the fear of long words. It topped the list of phobias in 17 other states too, according to research by allaboutcats.com.
The website’s report revealed other unusual fears around the nation: ephebiphobia, the fear of teenagers, tops the list in Arizona and Indiana.
The fears sound funny. But emerging nomophobia (no-phone phobia) is no joke among those severely afflicted. Symptoms of the condition include disrupted breathing, trembling, perspiration, agitation, disorientation and tachycardia (a heart rate of more than 100 beats per minute), according to
research cited by the Journal of Family Medicine and Primary Care.
“We have to re-establish the human-human interactions, face to face connections,” the journal advises.
Some New Yorkers scoff at these concerns.
“I’ve lost my phone so many times it doesn’t even bother me,” a 36-year-old Manhattan accountant told The Post. Her phone was “already in the Bronx,” phone locator revealed, when the discovered it missing while in Hudson Yards last week. The problem was quickly solved by a trip to the Apple store to move all her info from the Cloud to a new machine.
“We all know phones are replaceable,” she said.
The phrase nomophobia was coined by the UK Post Office in a 2008 study, but is only recently gaining traction. The survey found that 53 percent of Brits suffered anxiety when separated from their phones, likening the stress level to “wedding day jitters.”
Nomophobia is also the No. 1 “unusual fear” in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Oregon, Tennessee and Virginia, the survey revealed.
Phubbing is another emerging mobile-phone phenomenon that intrigues researchers. It’s the act of snubbing another person in public to devote quality time to your beloved cell phone.
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