iPhone separation? University study says you’ll go bonkers

By Phil Moore | January 12, 2015

That queasiness when you realize you left your iPhone at home? It’s more than just a stray feeling – it’s literally driving you crazy. A new study reveals that those who are accustomed to regularly having their smartphone at their side tend to feel more anxious and perform more poorly at various tasks when their phone isn’t around them. It suggests a level of psychological dependency which has heretofore thought to be merely superficial.

The study from the University of Missouri revealed that subjects whose iPhone was visibly next to them were able to act more relaxed and perform tasks more easily. But when that phone is taken away, a form of separation anxiety causes them to lose focus. That could be caused by the instinctive fear that most smartphone users have at the idea of losing their six hundred dollar phone or having it stolen, and the need to check their surroundings frequently to make sure it hasn’t wandered off. But it may instead be due to the sheer number of modern daily life tasks which we’ve come to depend on our phone for, and the fear that we’ll be cut off from large chunks of our life if our phone is away from us for too long.

Those who are worried about becoming too psychologically dependent on their iPhone shouldn’t run out and replace it with an Android however; the study shows that anyone who regularly uses any smartphone can fall into the same dependency and become just as bonkers when separated from it.