Nomophobia, the fear of being out of mobile phone contact. The phrase was coined by a U.K. study commissioned by SecurEnvoy as an abbreviation for no-mobile-phone phobia. According to an article, 77% of the 18-24 age group revealed nomophobia. If a person doesn’t have his or her cell phone, and feels uncomfortable trying to respond to real life situations without it, experts warn this is addiction.
In Hong Kong, it is not hard to find teenagers using their phones. Traveling on vehicles, having lunch in restaurants, you can see youths using their phones wherever and whenever their hands are free. They cannot refrain from using mobile phones, many of them even use their mobile in class secretly under the risk of receiving a penalty. It is indeed an addiction-like behavior that may lead to different negative impacts. I will discuss some possible solutions to this problem in the following.
Some parents complain that their children no longer communicate with them, teens do nothing else but sit by their mobile phone waiting for calls or text messages, and their relationship become worse. To solve this problem, parents could try to organize more outdoor activities during weekends. Hiking and doing community service might be some possible activities that they can do. Their relationship could be improved through more face-to-face communication. Also, more topics could be discussed when having meals. However, this is not easy to put into practice. Teens may have so many excuses to reject the family activities, such as they need to stay at home to finish their assignments, they have to discuss projects with peers, they need more rest, etc. Therefore, this solution may not be feasible.
Perhaps parents may not be the correct approach to solve the problem, instead, school is a better and more suitable channel to change youngsters’ addiction-like behavior.
As students spend most of their time, like 10 hours, in