'Nomophobia' strikes Indian phone
addicts By Raja Murthy
MUMBAI - 'Nomophobia', or severe anxiety and panic
attacks over losing access to a cell phone, is the
new evolutionary twist to the gadget Alexander
Graham Bell engineered. The missing ring tone is
causing psychological disorders in India, say
medical researchers.
"Our ongoing research
found 45% of the study population nomophobic,"
says Dr Sanjay Dixit, professor and head of the
Community Medicine Department at the Mahatma
Gandhi Medical College in the central Indian city
of Indore. "This is in the age group of 18 to 30
years, in urban areas, using mobile phones for
over three hours a day. Our original study in 2009
medical college students had 20% of the study
population being nomophobic."
The first of
its kind study that the Indian Journal of Community
Medicine published in
2009 [1] is being updated, with news that the cell
phone addiction levels are getting worse. The
original study involved cell phone users between
17-28 years, and the higher percentage of addicts
was among 20-22 years.
"73% of students
keep their mobile phone with them even when they
go to sleep - the cell phone is with them for 24
hours a day," said the report. "Since millions of
subscribers are being added every month,
full-blown nomophobia has all possibilities to
reach the epidemic scale, leading to serious
psychiatric and psychological problems among
users."
The warning is not far-fetched,
given the general cell phone-dependency among even
children. Zoya, a school-going daughter of a
friend in Kolkata, sends and receives text
messages at 2.00 am. She would have contributed
healthily to the eight trillion text messages
estimated to have been exchanged worldwide in
2011. "There is definitely a rise in nomophobia
among the general population," Dr Dixit said in an
e-mail to Asia Times Online, about his updated
research.
Asia would be guaranteed world
leader status in nomophobia cases, with India,
China, Indonesia, Japan and Pakistan featuring in
the list of top ten mobile phone using countries
worldwide [2]. India, after China, is the world's
second-largest mobile-phone using nation, with 884
million cell phone connections. China has 963
million potential nomophobics. China and India
account for more than 30% of global cell phone
usage.
Dr Dixit, Harish Shukla and their
colleagues in their updated study found 12% of
respondents said they cannot live without their
mobile phone. The most affected age group found
was between 20-28 years.
This generation
in their twenties may have not even seen the
telephone of my school days in the 1970s and
1980s, a sturdy iron-box sized object [3] with the
forefinger used to dial a numbered circular disc
that made a whir while connecting to the world.
It's a bit difficult to imagine folks lugging this
bread toaster-sized apparatus with them all day
along as they do with cell phones, including
during the morning walk at 6.30 am a long the
Marine Drive promenade in Mumbai.
Nomphobia is dangerous in other ways. Dr
Dixit, who did his post graduate studies in health
system management in the US, found 25% of the
nomophobia-afflicted suffered mishaps while
messaging or talking on the phone. This included
minor road accidents, falling while going upstairs
or downstairs and stumbling while walking. More
than 20% also reported pain in the thumbs due to
excessive texting.
Dr Dixit offers three
questions for readers to check if one is charging
towards nomophobia: "a) Do you feel throughout the
day that your mobile phone is ringing (the
category called 'Ringers'); b) Do you check again
and again for your mobile phone in your pockets
('Checkers'); c) Do you get restless/disturbed if
you get a mobile phone call while preoccupied some
important work, or get restless if you have missed
calls or someone does not pick up your calls
ringing, or get restless if battery goes down?"
At least this chronicler of the phenomenon
is reasonably sure of getting nowhere near
acquiring membership to Club Nomophobia. I am
quite happy being among the last of the Asia's
journalists, if not the last, to have never owned
a cell phone, and who never intend to do so. There
are 200 million Indians who don't own mobile
phones, according to the Registrar General of
India, reporting in the first phase of Census 2011
released on March 13.
I am a contented
member of this tribe. The cell phone, I am
convinced in my case, deserves top-ranking among
possessions that soon possess the possessor, a
Trojan Horse of modern day life. Anything that
induces unnecessary conversation is bound to bring
trouble. As it is, 99.94% of the woes of life are
probably due to talking too much. And with 87% of
the world's population already cell-phone users,
according to the Switzerland-based International
Telecommunications Union, that risks trouble.
With cell phones, I find total abstinence
and "cell-ibacy" easier than rationing cell phone
use. I am sure about not surrendering my joyous
"celli-bate" status, not even if Nokia offers its
diamond-encrusted Nokia Supreme for US$1, payable
in installments, and sends Scarlett O' Hara to
make the sales presentation.
Mobile
temptations and nomophobia was more or less
inevitable given how no gadget in human history,
of this hand-held size, has evolved from a single
purpose to so many uses.
The Indian
Railways, for instance, this March even converted
the cell phone into a valid train ticket. Just
show the ticket collector the short message text
of the electronic ticket confirmation. You can
even now use the cell phone to book in advance
meal preferences such as a for diabetics on select
Indian trains.
Medical treatment too can
now be administered directly through the cell
phone and the Internet. A Bluetooth protocol is
being used to deliver a very high radio frequency
to heal a patient, through an evolving generic and
real-time Internet telemedicine aid system.
Martin Cooper, credited with developing
the first commercial cell phone in 1983 [5], might
be astonished at how his invention is used less
than three decades later: as alarm clock, radio,
music player, torch light, camera; to shop, buy
travel tickets, or read news; for video
conferencing and accessing social media networks;
to e-mail, watch live TV, make video clips, play
games, do online banking; as a map for finding
places, for accessing financial services ... And
so the list goes on. More than 300,000 mobile
phone applications were developed in just the past
three years.
Quite likely cell phone
inventors are working on a prototype of a mobile
phone that can cook rice and make peanut butter.
Not surprisingly, more people, in fact, are using
mobile phones for everything except barely make
phone calls, says a New York Times report. [6]
Fascinating statistics from Ireland-based
MobiThinking [7] show that the cell phone is
increasingly the single major device owned in Asia
and Africa, where personal computers are less
prevalent than elsewhere.
Website visitor
tracker and analyst StatCounter says nearly 8.5%
of website hits and page views in January 2012
came from a handheld mobile device. Over 1.2
billion people use the mobile phone to access the
Internet, and the majority of them are Asians.
China has nearly 300 million people using cell
phones to access the Internet, according to the
China Internet Network Information Center. South
Korea (91%) and Japan (88%) dominate mobile
broadband penetration worldwide.
Nomophobia may be prevalent, but is not
yet a certified phobia, says Dr Dixit. It is not
yet included in the Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual of Mental Disorder (DSM), published by the
American Psychiatric Association, the definitive
reference for mental health professionals. But his
ongoing research is heading towards confirming
India is doing its best to see cell-phone related
mental disorders are not left out of the DSM for
too long.
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