How would you feel if someone took away your smartphone? Nomophobia, the suggested moniker for that anxiety produced by the separation between one and one’s phone, was cooked up by a market research firm. Is there a better term for that awful feeling? This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Nomophobia”
You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette.
Grant, you love your cell phone, right?
Yes.
Right? What do you have, a little Android?
Mm-Yeah.
Got all your phone numbers in there.
Yes.
Synced with your Google Calendar, right?
Sure. All the word games, that sort of thing.
Oh, right. The word games, right.
Mm—
Okay, question for you.
What would you feel if I took your phone away from you? Just for a few days. How would you feel?
I’d cry.
I would rather give up my postal mail, my landline, and half the electricity in my house.
Whoa.
I ask you this, Grant, because there’s a word that’s been circulating lately on the internet, and it’s a term for that fear of being without one’s mobile phone.
Yes.
Have you run across that?
I have seen this.
Gnomophobia.
Gnomophobia.
Yeah.
I got gnomophone, right?
Yeah, or else you’re afraid of little elves, you know.
Gnomophobia.
But I suspect that you feel the same way I do about this term, which is that it was coined apparently four years ago by some market research firm and has been promoted by marketers and by journalists.
So probably a flash in the pan.
But what I’m thinking is we still need a term for this because when I think about being without my mobile phone, you know, my palms get sweaty and I just get anxious.
So we’re talking about withdrawal, right?
Yeah, yeah, withdrawal.
And, you know, I’ve been trying to come up with a term for this.
The only thing that I can really come up with so far is dilarium tremens.
What do you think?
Dial.
Dilerium, yeah.
So the word dial is in there at the beginning.
Yeah, but the feeling that you get when you’ve left the house without your phone, I mean, it’s like having a phantom limb or something.
It is.
Yeah, I have a ritual phone, wallet, keys, mama, boy.
That’s what I say to myself when I leave the house with my family.
Phone, wallet, keys, mama, boy.
That is hysterical.
Those are the things that are important to me.
Yeah, because if you don’t have that phone, you feel naked out there.
And it’s not just the phone part is the least important part of the phone.
Good point.
It’s the email.
It’s the maps.
It’s the navigation.
It’s like finding the things that, you know, where’s the nearest park? Where’s the bathroom, right?
Exactly.
Is there another way to this beach? What’s traffic like?
Exactly.
What does Yelp say?
Yeah, exactly.
Well, I think we need a term for this, and I just know that our listeners can come up with a better term than nomophobia.
What’s your term for not having your phone and really wanting it?
See, you need your phone.
Email words@waywordradio.org.
