Nomophobia: what you need to know about the fear of being deprived of your phone

The selfie has been banned from the steps of the Cannes Film Festival, "digital detox" holidays are gaining ground, one in four French people are considering deleting their Facebook account... but smartphone addiction remains well anchored.

The constant improvement of the smartphone always makes us more addicted, more "connected". An addiction that now has a name, coming from the contraction of an English expression "no mobile-phone phobia", nomophobia, or "the excessive fear of being separated from your mobile phone".

But does this phobia really exist? How do you know if you are nomophobic yourself? Besides... wouldn't everyone be more or less? And if so, how can you start a detox?

Because yes, we can indeed speak of a detox cure. When a nomophobe finds himself separated from his phone, he experiences the same symptoms as a drug addict in the event of lack: stress, anxiety and withdrawal. And this dependence is widespread: 50% of 18-34 year olds check their phone as soon as they wake up, before they even get up.

An official entry among the "mental disorders"

Michael Stora, psychologist and founder of the Observatory of Digital Worlds in Human Sciences, explains to RTL.fr that this compulsive need to consult his telephone has become a real problem, "we realized that when a person has no more battery on your phone, this can cause terrible anxiety, impressive states of anxiety. Reactions that show us that we have all become addicted to our smartphone.

This addiction has become so widespread that some psychiatrists suggest integrating nomophobia into the DSM, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. For the most affected, our smartphones can even cause cortisol discharges in our body... namely that cortisol is the "severe stress" hormone.

Our smartphone addiction can be accompanied by other alarming signs, as France Inter points out. Like for example sound hallucinations and non-existent signals. Who has never taken their phone out of their pocket thinking they felt it vibrate?

Why do we become nomophobic?

"I think that often we blame the smartphone by avoiding a more complicated reflection of the context in which we look at our screens." analyzes Michael Stora before wondering, "when a teenager keeps being on his phone during dinner, is it because he is really addicted or because he is constantly asked about his academic success which sends him back to a child's position, when he would perhaps like to talk about other subjects? "The smartphone retains an impressive addictive power. A kind of reassuring "wireless cuddly toy" for some, which gives the feeling of keeping control over our relationships, even over our thoughts.

No more question of getting bored, if the wait for a bus becomes too long, just take your phone out of your pocket to fill the minutes that pass. For Michael Stora, frantically consulting his phone "goes beyond boredom, it's an avoidance of one's own thoughts" he explains before adding that "boredom is also letting oneself go daydreams. And since our life is not always rosy, instead of confronting an emotion that is not positive, we go to our mobile so as not to think."Beyond a rampart to our thoughts negative, the smartphone is also a bulwark to our senses, and by extension, to our memories. Taking the example of a magnificent landscape that we photograph with a telephone, Michael Stora concludes on our sensory memory undermined by our telephone, "when we are faced with this landscape there is not only the image that we capture, but also the sound, the smell, sometimes we even want to touch the grass. It is ultimately in this sensory memory that things take shape, the visual is not very empathetic. Tactile is."