THE ESSENTIAL
- The fear of being separated from your phone is called “nomophobia”.
- The French spend an average of three hours and thirty minutes a day on their telephone.
Phone addiction is now widespread. To “detox”, many of us try to reduce our screen time. Silent mode is one of the methods used to resist temptation. But according to a study published in the journal Computers in Human Behaviorthis technique may well produce the opposite effect, at least in some people.
“FOMO”
The explanation for this phenomenon is quite simple: in the absence of a “beep” or a vibration to notify us that someone has sent us a message or that an influencer has published a new photo, we risk to be more often tempted to check our phone to make sure we haven’t “missed” anything. This fear corresponds to what is called “fear of missing out”, better known by its abbreviation “FOMO”.
The study, led by researchers at Penn State University (USA), was conducted among 138 people. Participants were asked to test several features of their smartphone for four consecutive days: 42% chose vibrate mode alone, 8.7% turned to silent mode, while the others left their ringer on.
Reasonable use of your smartphone
The results revealed that people who put their phones on silent ended up spending the most time on social media and checking their phones more often. Smartphone screen time was higher among people with FOMO. According to the authors, disabling notifications also increased their feelings of stress.
“Instead of muting or disabling all notifications on their phone to avoid distractions, users suffering from FOMO might customize their notification settings and selectively turn off certain notifications”suggested Mengqi Liao, a communications researcher at Penn State University and lead author of the study.
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