Mobile Phone Withdrawl Symptoms on the RISE

SOME people fear spiders, for others it's heights, but in the increasingly always on, internet connected world we live in, a new phobia has emerged: 'nomophobia' -- the fear of being without your mobile phone.

Nomophobia (no-mobile-phobia) is on the rise with a recent study in Britain finding that 66 per cent of the 1000 people surveyed saying they fear losing or being without their mobile phone.

But according to research from Vodafone, the signs get even more worrying. When a group of consumers were asked what they were prepared to give up in place of their mobile phone, 70 per cent of respondents said they would forgo alcohol, 63 per cent would abandon chocolate and 33 per cent would abstain from sex.

"I personally find that it is a worry that people would really give up a good session of … chocolate, for their smartphone," Vodafone's global chief executive Vittorio Colao told attendees at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last week.

Read more of the article by Mitchell Bingemann at The Australian.