In the age of technology and communications, there is a phenomenon that is worrying mental health professionals: There are more and more people with mobile addiction completely “hooked” to your smartphone.
We can see them absorbed in their daily lives, messaging each other on WhatsApp, without being able to take their eyes off the screen. This leads them to constantly check if they have any new notifications, preventing them from enjoying day-to-day activities, since they always have a part of their mind pending the positive reinforcement that social networks or instant messaging apps provide them. This is what is known as FOMO Syndrome, as described by psychologist Jonathan García-Allen.
Mobile addiction is increasingly common and is a sign that we are increasingly dependent on technology. Some people do not make rational and positive use of them, but end up maintaining a dependency relationship with gadgets. Sometimes this addiction is known by the neologism nomophobia.
This addiction can lead to serious problems and discomfort.
Symptoms
Some of the symptoms and signs that may indicate that you are addicted to your mobile phone (either cell phoneas it is known in Latin America), are the following:
Consequences and effects
There are a series of negative consequences derived from mobile phone addiction. These negative effects can be classified according to several characteristics.
1. Anxiety
As it is a dependency, it can be linked to states of anxiety and compulsion. When a person forgets their cell phone at home, for example, they feel that something is missing, they feel cut off, and this can cause anxiety and discomfort. Specifically, this discomfort has recently been conceptualized as technostress.
The tendency to check your phone every few minutes can be considered a compulsion. It is a behavior, an acquired habit that is neither adaptive nor brings us anything positive, but that the addicted person cannot avoid.
3. Deterioration of personal relationships
There are also negative effects of cell phone addiction linked to the deterioration of interpersonal relationships Many experts point out the paradox that, in the historical era in which we are most connected to other people and cultures, we suffer the most from the effects of loneliness, isolation and misunderstanding.
We have all noticed that gatherings between friends have changed in the last decade. It is almost unthinkable that friendly chats are not constantly interrupted by one of the friends, who cannot stop checking their cell phone, answering messages, calls…
It is even possible to observe how in groups of friends, each and every one of them is more aware of their mobile phone than the people in front of them. This type of collective autism means that we do not enjoy in-person interactions, since we are in multitasking mode and paying attention to the smartphone, which ends up distorting the meaning of the meeting, generating frequent pauses, and therefore not allowing us to flow and maintain a fresh and dynamic conversation.
friendly presenteeism
In another old article by labor psychologist Jonathan García-Allen published in Psychology and Mind We talk about workplace presenteeism. This phenomenon occurs when a worker goes to work but, for some reason, dedicates a large part of the day to issues unrelated to his job duties.
In some way, cell phone addiction is causing a similar phenomenon in interpersonal relationships. Our friendly or romantic encounters are marred by constant interruptions. This alters the magic and the unique and unrepeatable character of each interaction.
The image we show with this attitude is very negative We’ve normalized it, but let’s stop and think for a second: how would we feel if someone we were dating was constantly losing attention to us to look at another individual sitting several meters away, or at a television screen? We would probably last a few minutes, until we would get angry and leave the place.
Of course, there are people who do not have the bad habit of checking their mobile phone while eating or going out for a drink with a friend. This is to be appreciated. And, of course, they deserve our respect and that we stop dividing our attention between real conversation and virtual conversations. It is a matter of respect, education and valuing the other person and offering them our full attention. Your time is just as valuable as ours
