What is nomophobia, and how common is it?

The pat of the pocket. The small lurch when the battery hits 5%. The moment you realise, halfway to the station, that your phone is still on the kitchen table. These feelings now have a name, and the name has spread far enough that people around the world search for it. So, what is nomophobia, and how common is it?

What does nomophobia mean?

It means the fear of being without your phone. The Cambridge Dictionary defines it as fear or worry at the idea of being without your mobile phone or unable to use it.^[1] What does nomophobia stand for? “No mobile phobia”: Merriam-Webster gives its origin as nomo-, from “no mobile”, plus -phobia.^[2]

The caveat is that the “phobia” part is borrowed rather than earned. In everyday use, nomophobia covers anything from mild irritation at a dead battery to real distress, and it is not a clinical term.

How do you pronounce nomophobia?

NOH-moh-FOH-bee-uh, with the stress on FOH. The Cambridge Dictionary gives /ˌnəʊ.məʊˈfəʊ.bi.ə/ in British English and /ˌnoʊ.moʊˈfoʊ.bi.ə/ in American English.^[1] Think “no mo” (no mobile) followed by “phobia”.

When was nomophobia coined?

2008, in the UK. Merriam-Webster dates the first known use of the word to 2008.^[2] It appeared in British newspaper coverage on 31 March 2008 of a survey by the Post Office, which questioned more than 2,100 mobile phone users. As reported at the time, 53% (48% of women and 58% of men) said they felt anxious when they ran out of battery or credit, lost their phone or had no network coverage.^[3]

The caveat: this was a commercial survey reported in the press, and the original report does not seem to be publicly available, so we cannot check how the questions were asked. It explains where the word came from far better than it measures anything. You may also see a 2010 date quoted for the coinage; we could not find a primary source that supports it, so we have left it out.

Is nomophobia a real phobia?

Not officially: nomophobia is not a diagnosis and is not included in DSM-5, the psychiatric manual published by the American Psychiatric Association in 2013. In 2014, two Italian researchers published a paper proposing that nomophobia should be considered for inclusion, and they acknowledged that it had not been included.^[4] The authors of the main nomophobia questionnaire have also suggested it could be considered a situational phobia.^[5] Those are proposals, not decisions.

So the feeling is real, and for some people it is strong. But the category is informal, much like phone addiction itself, which we look at in is phone addiction real? This is general information, not medical advice. If anxiety about being without your phone is affecting your sleep, work or relationships, talk to your GP.

How common is nomophobia?

Common, on questionnaires. A 2021 meta-analysis pooled 20 studies covering 12,462 people in ten countries. It found:

• About 71% had moderate to severe nomophobia (70.76%).
• About 21% had severe nomophobia (20.81%).
• University students had the highest rate of severe nomophobia, at about 25%.^[6]

A 2023 review focused on university students, pooling 23 studies that all used the same questionnaire. It found mild nomophobia in 24%, moderate in 56% and severe in 17%, with severe rates ranging from 71% in Indonesia to 3% in Germany.^[7]

So is nomophobia rare? No, by these measures it is the norm. But hold the numbers loosely. They come from self-report scores and cut-offs, not from clinicians, and “moderate nomophobia” on a questionnaire describes a fairly ordinary attachment to a device most of us use for maps, money and family. The huge spread between countries also suggests the figures say as much about how and where the studies were done as about people’s minds.

What is the nomophobia questionnaire (NMP-Q)?

It is a 20-item self-report questionnaire, published in 2015 in Computers in Human Behavior by Caglar Yildirim and Ana-Paula Correia. They built it from interviews with nine undergraduates at a US university, then tested it with 301 undergraduates. It measures four dimensions: not being able to communicate, losing connectedness, not being able to access information and giving up convenience.^[5]

The NMP-Q is now widely used in prevalence studies, including every study in the 2023 student review. The caveat is that it is a research measure. A high score tells you that you agree with a lot of statements about missing your phone. It does not diagnose anything. If you want a broader look at problematic phone use, see the signs of phone addiction.

How do you overcome nomophobia?

There is no tested treatment for nomophobia, because it is not a recognised condition, so be wary of anyone selling a cure. What tends to help is plain and gradual: spending short, planned stretches without the phone and letting them grow.

• Start small. Leave the phone in another room for twenty minutes while you cook or read.
• Remove the practical fears. Tell family when you will be off the phone, and carry a charger if a flat battery is the real worry.
• Make one daily phone-free habit. A walk, a meal or the first half hour of the morning.
• Notice the feeling without obeying it. The urge to check usually passes in a few minutes.

Do phone lock boxes work? looks at one way to make the distance physical. If you would like to try a phone-free stretch as a family, the Family Phone-Free Hour Kit makes it a shared, low-stakes habit rather than a test of willpower. And if the anxiety is intense, or part of wider worry, your GP is the right first stop.