According to a recent study of Google search analytics, nomophobia, the fear of losing your cell phone, is the number one unusual fear of people living in New York, Oregon, Connecticut, Tennessee, Virginia, and Massachusetts.
The New York Post reports that a British study conducted in 2008 found that 53% of Brits who lose their cell phones experience the same kind of anxiety that they had on their wedding day:
The New York Post added that recent research reveals that losing a cellphone is no laughing matter for some:
The fears sound funny. But emerging nomophobia (no-phone phobia) is no joke among those severely afflicted. Symptoms of the condition include disrupted breathing, trembling, perspiration, agitation, disorientation and tachycardia (a heart rate of more than 100 beats per minute), according to research cited by the Journal of Family Medicine and Primary Care.
The Journal of Family Medicine added that this fear reveals there is a need for people to “re-establish the human-human interactions, face-to-face connections.”
READ: Nomophobia strikes fear in the hearts of the phoneless AND NOMOPHOBIA: NO MObile PHone PhoBIA
I did a podcast along this theme a while back: