Nomophobia: Is the Fear of Being without a Smartphone Associated with Problematic Use?

Abstract

Mobile phones are changing behaviour, relationships, communication and the dynamics of physical environments. As such, reliance on the device for everyday activities has increased. Consequently, “nomophobia”, defined as the fear of being without one’s mobile phone, has emerged as a new phobia. The current study aimed to determine if nomophobia can increase the likelihood of problematic dependent, prohibited and dangerous mobile phone use. The sample comprised 2838 participants (males n = 1337 females n = 1501) recruited from various online platforms. The instrument used to measure nomophobia was the Nomophobia Questionnaire (NMP-Q), while problematic mobile phone use was measured using the Problematic Mobile Phone Use Questionnaire (PMPUQ-R). The findings revealed a strong positive correlation between nomophobia and all three problematic use factors. In addition to nomophobia, regression models revealed younger age and more time spent on a mobile phone per day significantly increased problematic dependency, prohibited use and dangerous use. Males were more likely to engage in prohibited and dangerous use, while no significant gender differences were found in dependent use. These findings support the need for further research into the relationship between nomophobia and specific aspects of problematic mobile phone use, such as using a mobile phone while driving.

The Prevalence of Nomophobia by Population and by Research Tool: A Systematic Review, Meta-Analysis, and Meta-Regression

“…Studies came from 10 different countries. India contributed with seven studies [2,3,[15][16][17][18][19][20], Iran [21,22], Turkey [1,23], and Pakistan [24,25] contributed each with two studies, and Australia [26], Bahrain [8], Israel [27], Italy [28], Kuwait [29], and USA [30] each contributed with one study. Fourteen studies [2,[15][16][17][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][28][29][30] (70%) of the studies recruited university students as participants, while four studies [8,18,27,28] (20%) recruited young adults and only two studies [1,3] (10%) recruited high school students.…”

“…Fourteen studies [2,[15][16][17][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][28][29][30] (70%) of the studies recruited university students as participants, while four studies [8,18,27,28] (20%) recruited young adults and only two studies [1,3] (10%) recruited high school students. The NMP-Q was used in 12 studies [1,3,8,17,19,[24][25][26][27][28][29][30] (60%), and the remaining used other method to assess the nomophobia, mainly researcherdeveloped research tools. Researcher studies reported the prevalence of nomophobia by severity-mild, moderate, and severe.…”

Effects of Difficulty in Handling Emotions and Social Interactions on Nomophobia: Examining the Mediating Role of Feelings of Loneliness

“…As a further limitation, we considered the global nomophobia score on NMP-Q, but not the score on each of its subscales. Although the application of a total nomophobia score is common across international literature (Gezgin et al, 2018a(Gezgin et al, , 2018bKaviani et al, 2020), the examination of nomophobia subdimensions would have offered more detailed information about the associations among the investigated variables.…”

Problematic Smartphone Use in Spanish and Italian University Students

“…Despite the unlimited potential offered by ICT in general and mobile technology devices in particular, the truth is that the smartphone can also be harmful and bad for the health of the user when its use is abusive and excessive [19]. In fact, a number of terms have been coined in scientific literature to refer to this set of damaging behaviours: technostress [20]; smombie [21]; phubbing [22]; fear of missing out (FOMO) [23]; and nomophobia [24]. The last of these-an abbreviation of the expression "NO MObile PHone phobia"-refers to the fear or anxiety provoked by being without a mobile phone for a period of time, which can elicit responses of a physical, physiological, and social nature [23,[25][26][27][28].…”