(light playful music)

Nomophobia is a new word that's being coined

to describe no mobile phobia

and it's the idea that a lot of us,

in thinking about not having our phones,

experience something like a phobia and this is supposed to

describe hundreds of millions of people today

and I'm sure that number is growing at the moment.

What that means is that when you think about,

for example, your phone falling out of your pocket,

tumbling to the ground and shattering into a million pieces,

you should experience anxiety symptom

and it's especially true among young people.

I ran a study at one point where I asked young people,

a whole lot of teenagers, a very simple question.

I said to them,

"Imagine you have this very unpleasant choice.

So, you can either watch your phone tumble to the ground

and shatter into a million pieces

or you can have a small bone in your hand broken."

Now, that seems to people of a certain age and older

like a fairly straightforward question

with a straightforward answer.

It seems ridiculous.

Of course you choose to save the integrity of your hand

and let your phone break.

You can always replace a phone, but for young people

this is actually a very difficult question.

In my experience, about 40% - 50% of them will say,

"Ultimately, I think it probably makes more sense

to have a bone in my hand broken

than it does to have my phone broken."

And, you can understand why that is, apart from the fact

that it is expensive to have a phone repaired

and there's some time where you're without your phone,

that is their portal to a social world

that is very important to them.

Being without that social world for a while

is probably not as detrimental in some aspects

as being without a particular bone in your hand.

Most of the time, you can get by and you can see this

in the way they ask follow-up questions.

So, a lot of these teens will say to me things like,

"Is it my left hand or my right hand?"

and the most important question,

"Once I break that bone in my hand,

can I still use my phone?

Is it a bone that I need to be able to scroll on the phone,

because if it is, then that's no deal,

but if it's not a bone that I need to use my screen

at least I can continue to use my phone

during the time I'm healing."

If people are willing to endure physical harm

to keep their phones that obviously suggests

that this is a major issue.

The definition that I like for behavioral addiction

that makes the most sense to me is an experience

that we return to compulsively over and over again

because it feels good in a short run but in the long run,

it ultimately undermines our well-being in some respect.

So, it can be someone who notices that over time

their social relationships are degrading

because they don't have a consistent, face-to-face contact

with people and that's especially problematic for kids

who need time in that real face-to-face social world

because that's where they develop

all the competencies of being a social creature.

The way to work out what other people are thinking,

to share your feelings in a way

that you want them to be shared

for other people to understand you

for you to make just the right facial expressions at just the right times.

Those seem like obvious and easy-to-do things

for most adults but for kids it's very difficult to do that.

They take time to hone those skills

and so you need face-to-face time to do that

and if you don't have that, if you're spending all your time

on screens because it's really fun to crush one more candy

on Candy Crush or do whatever it is that you might be doing,

you're not developing those long-term competencies

and therefore your long-term well-being is degraded.

(light playful music)