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, according to researchers at the City University of Hong Kong and the Sungkyunkwan University in Seoul. There's even a real term to describe that anxiety you feel when you can't find your phone for five whole minutes: "nomophobia."
According to the scientists,
the panic that people experience when they can't access their phone has nothing to do with making or receiving phone calls. Instead, people get anxious because mobile devices are so technologically advanced, they are almost a part of our personal identities. And although the
limited study only used a small sample size of 300 students in South Korea, the researchers believe their results show that smartphone separation anxiety will only increase.
After analyzing survey responses, the researchers used semantic techniques to determine that words related to memory and self like "memory," "I," "my," "to me" and "part" were frequently used by individuals with high nomophobia levels.
Think about it: our cell phones store many personal messages and phones calls and allow us to quickly
access apps and websites that are significant to our daily lives. So it's no surprise our phones, as well as social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, have almost become extensions of ourselves.
"As smartphones evoke more personal memories, users extend more of their identity onto their smartphones," according to the study, which was published in the Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking Journal.
"When users perceive smartphones as their extended selves, they are more likely to become attached to the devices, which, in turn, leads to nomophobia by heightening the phone proximity-seeking tendency," the research says.
Comment: Listen to the recent Truth Perspective for an in-depth discussion of the Machiavellian forces behind these mass migrations.