Today I learned a new word—nomophobia. A recent article in Washington Lawyer defines nomophobia as “fear of being without a smartphone” and describes a large number of studies showing that 94 percent of us have experienced nomophobia, a form of addiction. I know I have. A while back I met some colleagues for lunch. As we were catching up, my colleague Cathy was talking about a recent visit with her granddaughters and went to pull out her phone to show us some photos. While looking through her purse she discovered that her phone was not there. She casually announced, “Oh well, I must have left my phone at home” and calmly put her purse away. Her reaction, or lack of one to be more precise, left me stunned. As Cathy transitioned the conversation, I hit pause with “wait a minute, what do you mean you don’t have your phone? How did you even get here without your phone, what did you do for directions?” Although I had my suspicions, it was at that moment that I understood that I had an addiction to my phone
I am currently in nomophobia recovery, the addiction under control. I tried most of the common strategies, some worked for a bit, but nothing stuck. What worked was changing how I thought about the phone, realizing it really wasn’t a phone in the original meaning of the term—a communication device. Sure, that phone is still there, but there is no addiction attached to it. I dislike talking on the phone. The device is a portal into the virtual world, the ever expanding universe if you will—and that is where the addiction lies. So I simply started calling my phone “the portal.” That simple change in terminology changed how I see the device, how I think about it, and most importantly, how I behave with it. When I instinctively reach to pick it up, I see the portal and usually put it back down. An habitual thought and response pattern broken.
Like everything else in my life that has resulted in meaningful and lasting change, this started with the understanding that the status quo was not sustainable. What followed was messy trial and error with a lot of patience mixed in. The tipping point was a simple change in terminology—it’s not a phone, it’s a portal.
