Can't be away from your phone? Study finds link to higher levels of obsession-compulsion

Date:
August 28, 2020
Source:
Ohio State University
Summary:
Feelings of panic when a person is away from their smartphone could
be connected to general feelings of inadequacy and inferiority,
a new study of young people suggests.



FULL STORY ========================================================================== Feelings of panic when a person is away from their smartphone could be connected to general feelings of inadequacy and inferiority, a new study
of young people in Portugal suggests.


==========================================================================
The study, published in the most recent issue of the journal Computers
in Human Behavior Reports, found that gender has no bearing on whether
people will feel apprehensive or anxious without their phones. But people
who feel that way tend to be more anxious and obsessive-compulsive in
their day-to-day lives than other people, the study suggests.

"It is that fear, that panicky feeling, of 'oh, no, I left my phone
at home,'" said Ana-Paula Correia, one of the authors of the study,
associate professor in the department of educational studies at The Ohio
State University and director of Ohio State's Center on Education and
Training for Employment.

This study was based on Correia's previous work, which created a
questionnaire to evaluate individuals' reliance on their smartphones
and explored the term "nomophobia" -- the fear of being away from
one's smartphone. (Nomophobia is not recognized as a diagnosis by the
American Psychiatric Association.) For this study, researchers gave
that questionnaire and another that evaluated psychopathological symptoms
such as anxiety, obsession-compulsion and feelings of inadequacy to 495
adults aged 18 to 24 in Portugal. Those adults reported using their
phones for between four and seven hours a day, primarily for social
networking applications.

The researchers found that the more participants used their smartphone
each day, the more stress they reported feeling without their phone. A
little more than half of the study participants were female; the study
didn't find a link between gender and feelings of nomophobia.

The researchers also found that the higher participants scored on
obsession- compulsion, the more they feared being without their
phone. Obsession- compulsion was measured by asking participants to
rate how much they felt they had to "check and double-check what you do"
and similar questions.

There is a difference between normal smartphone use that benefits a
person's life -- say, video chatting with friends when you can't be
together in person or using it for work -- and smartphone use that
interferes with a person's life. That kind of behavior, Correia said,
is more likely to cause anxiety when we are away from our phones.

And, the study's results suggest that people experiencing tension might
see their phones as a stress-management tool.

"This concept is about more than just the phone," Correia said. "People
use it for other tasks, including social media, connecting, knowing what's going on with their social media influencers. So being away from the phone
or the phone having a low battery can sort of sever that connection and
leave some people with feelings of agitation."

========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by Ohio_State_University. Original
written by Laura Arenschield. Note: Content may be edited for style
and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Soraia Gonc,alves, Paulo Dias, Ana-Paula Correia. Nomophobia and
lifestyle: Smartphone use and its relationship to psychopathologies.

Computers in Human Behavior Reports, 2020; 2: 100025 DOI: 10.1016/
j.chbr.2020.100025 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/08/200828102137.htm

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