Bilal Ahmad Dar

Cell phones are so convenient that they’re an inconvenience.
Haruki Murakami

Technology, as we know, has transformed our life. So much so that the modern man has become a kind of post-human. The life of this post-human man is utterly dependent on technology, particularly on the mobile phone. This phone has multiple uses. It is used for communication, entertainment, education, business, profession, and almost everything. We have become addicted to it and have made it an essential element of our life. We consider our life incomplete without a mobile phone. These phones, thus, have colonised and subjugated our psyche.
The inseparability of the modern man and the mobile phone has made psychological linguists coin phone addiction-related neologisms. ‘Nomophobia and Ringxiety’ are two such. ‘Nomophobia’ is defined as the fear of not having a mobile phone with oneself. Each of us is the victim of this phobia. Wherever we go, we first of all verify whether we have taken our phones with us or not. We check our pockets continuously to make sure that our dear phone is with us or not. At times, even when the phone is in our hand, we start searching in our pockets. Ringxiety, as the name suggests, is to keep mistakenly thinking that the phone is ringing, even though it is not.
This cell phone addiction has made us psychic patients. We are not able to enjoy anything because of this addiction. It is even affecting our social relationships. Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter etc are alluring applications that have seeped into the psyche of the modern man. These have become so dominant that the modern man has lost all taste for any physical activity or field sport. The major part of both day and night is consumed in these social media apps.
Ringxiety is also called phantom vibration syndrome, which means that if not the ring, then the vibration of the phone is at the back of the mind at all times. We time and again feel that our cell phone is ringing or vibrating. Both ‘Nomophobia’ and ‘Ringxiety’ are the result of excessive use of cell phones. To save ourselves from becoming social misfits, we should limit the use of cell phones. Let’s busy ourselves with less harmful things and more enriching activities like reading books or playing sports outdoors.
Postscript: Cell phones are not a sign of power; they are a sign of subservience. (Dough Pappas)

The writer is a research scholar at Department of English, AMU. [email protected]

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