There is no life without wi-fi

Nomophobia, the fear of being left without a smartphone, and FoMO, the fear of losing something, are the new facets of anxiety.

No insects, snakes, airplanes or elevators. What the contemporary human being fears, even, is staying away from his companion at all times: the smartphone. If more and more research on the subject is right, you are likely to suffer from the so-called nomophobia (abbreviation for no-mobile-phone-phobia, or phobia of running out of the cell).

About two-thirds of Americans and a similar percentage among Britons consider themselves to be homophobic. The name is strange, but the situation is familiar. You may have felt anxious about forgetting your phone at home or keeping your battery powered up without a charger nearby. If the phobias described by psychiatry are irrational fears, nomophobia is not difficult to understand. The smartphone has become the Swiss Army knife of contemporary life: the tool with which we face the challenges of everyday life. It is our agenda of contacts and commitments. Our watch. Our entertainment center. Our camera and our photo album. It is, in addition to all this, our main instrument of communication with people and with the world.

Being away from the cell phone is like being disoriented and disconnected from reality. And that causes anxiety. When analyzing data from one of the most profound research on nomophobia, researchers at the University of Iowa have concluded that the anguish is triggered by at least four components: not being able to communicate with people, losing the connection in general, not have access to information and for convenience. The health consequences, however, have not yet been so clear.

"For the time being, we do not have longitudinal scientific studies to be able to assess the prevalence of homophobia and the problems arising from it over the years, because it is relatively recent and has changed its characteristics," says Sylvia van Enck Meira, Program Psychologist Technological Dependencies of the Institute of Psychiatry of the Hospital das Clínicas of São Paulo. "If access to the games by desktop computers was already something that worried, the issue of access to social networks through smartphones is even more intense and alarming."

In the 2000s, reporting on technology dependency had a typical character. They were kids and teenagers addicted to games, that friend of yours (or yourself) who slept at dawn playing at home or in the houses. Now social networks are like a game that everyone plays and the biggest opponent is yourself, your anxiety and the things you fail to do to accumulate updates and likes, which activate areas responsible for pleasure in the brain - in fact, the same points activated when we eat a candy or make money. And we got hooked on that feeling.

Fear of being left out

One explanation in vogue is that our exaggerated connection to the networks is just an irrational fear of being left out. The phenomenon has a name: FOMO, or fear of missing out. Since 2013, the term is part of the Oxford Dictionary. I guarantee you've heard ... right? How did you lose that?

Joking aside, FoMO is serious - it's been touted as one of the driving forces of social networking addiction. Is that the web bombards us with so much information about parties, news, memes trips that we feel that there is always something incredible that our radar did not get there.

The phenomenon is especially troubling in adolescence, where status and relationships go hand in hand with self-esteem, and the fear of being the only one who does not know gives a thrashing in the will to pay attention in class, for example. But FoMO is also behind dangerous behaviors of older people, such as accessing social networks and driving at the same time. For fear of being out, many people check social networks on waking up at dawn, or have delusions that the phone vibrated announcing a new message when there is nothing.

Despite the current examples, FoMO is not a new phenomenon, but a reflection of our own condition. "What sets the human apart from other animals is that we have the ability to understand time. And time is ruled by the idea of death: that things last, change, and end. Knowing that you will not live forever, you have to make choices. And, when you choose, you are losing other things that you will not have, "says psychologist Ana Luiza Mano, a professor of extension courses at PUC-SP.

Creator of the term, the British experimental psychologist Andrew Przybylski of the Oxford Internet Institute, led research on the psychological traits that can make people more vulnerable. "Our current understanding is that depriving the basic psychological needs of competence, autonomy and a sense of belonging can contribute to the feelings of FoMO," Przybylski told SUPER.

The impression of always letting something pass creates anguish. Fear of being left out is pathological when, "because you can not get information about everything, you feel bad, you try to make it happen and you always get frustrated," says Ana Luiza. People who are more difficult to give up control over choices and the future are more likely to experience anxiety.

Are you dependent?

The criteria for internet addiction are similar to that of anxiety disorders and substance dependence: they take into account the suffering and harm that the user brings to people's lives. If you have five of the criteria below, get help.

1. Excessive preoccupation with your image on the internet

2. Need to increase connected time to have the same satisfaction

3. Display too large efforts to decrease internet usage time

4. Show irritability and/or depression

5. When internet use is restricted, you waver in humor

6. Staying more connected than scheduled

7. Overuse puts work and family and social relationships at risk

8. Lying to others about the amount of hours connected