Everybody takes a look at their mobile phone 150 times a day, confirming that smartphones have shifted from complementing our daily lives to an addictive and indispensable communication tool, according to a report in the Spanish magazine TechBit.
The expert from the Open University of Catalonia and deputy academic director of psychology and education science studies Manuel Armayones analyzes five mental problems caused by mobile phone addiction.
In this context, many experts have highlighted mental illnesses that can result from excessive reliance on mobile devices, as well as disorders that may affect the ability to interact with other humans and the ability to concentrate essentially.
Although the World Health Organization (WHO) and ministries of different countries currently do not recognize Internet addiction in mental classification systems, many are turning to psychotherapy because they realize they have lost control of themselves in the use of mobile and feel addicted.
Therefore, the expert Manuel Armayones analyzed the main negative phenomena that led to addiction to these devices, as well as the mechanisms necessary to overcome these problems:
1 - Fear of the missed thing or what is known as Vomo
The magazine reported that the fear of missing something or what is known as Vomo is one of the disorders affecting most of the accounts on social media, where the person almost need, and compulsory, to constantly access to the pages of Facebook or Instagram.
According to University of Essex psychologist Andrew Brzebelsky and his team, who have been studying these diseases for years, this condition is more common among adolescents and young people, especially among men. In addition, most people who suffer from it are largely dissatisfied with their lives. The problem is that instead of feeling good after spending time on Facebook, they end up feeling sad.
2 - phobia loss of mobile phone or Nomophobia
The magazine reported that Nomophobia lies in the fear of losing a mobile phone from our hands. "There are people who take their phones to the bathroom and carry them in their pockets even when doing some household chores while cleaning or in the kitchen," he says.
In this case, phobias are manifested in two different types: the fear of a mobile phone near it, or the fear of running out of battery before reaching home, which in turn includes a lack of coverage.
According to the expert, among the solutions that help to avoid should be exposed to situations where you do not need to carry a mobile phone, such as going to buy some items or carry without a battery. Furthermore, you can turn off the mobile phone at night.
3. Placebo vibration syndrome
The magazine reported that the placebo vibration, or the so-called phantom call, is the feeling that the phone is vibrating or ringing at a time when it does not.
Overall, this vigilance can generate excessive anxiety or emotional attrition. To avoid this, one should keep in mind that with the time when they use their mobile phone all day at a rate of 150 times, it will be difficult to miss any notice. "If these fake vibrations are of concern to us, the simplest solution is to turn off the phone," the expert said.
4. The troubled mind
This phenomenon lies in navigating from one web page to another, and moving from content to content using hyperlinks to find the best information, offers and products, generating a feeling of resentment, because a person always spends his life looking for something better.
In fact, the strategy to avoid this disease is to control the time you spend looking for information and writing down what is in your notebook to see if you have made progress in collecting information.
5 - the impact of Google
The magazine added that it is about using the search engine as an extension of our memory to remember the phone number of a family member or doctor appointment, for example. Some experts argue that this condition affects people's memory because they become less dependent on short-term memory and more dependent on long-term memory.
To avoid this, some experts said that "Google is causing brain dryness, and there are some who argue that ICT can not be stopped and can even connect our minds to the Internet." As for Armaunis, he pointed out that we should reconsider the pros and cons of having so much information, which we previously stored in our brain, whether on a computer or a mobile phone.