Parlor Spider...Step In, Little Fly

Insightful thoughts and/or rants from atop the soapbox from one who wishes to share the "right" opinion with everyone.

Friday, February 17, 2012

Cellulossis?

Every year the Oxford dictionary people add a number of new, culture-driven words to the official dictionary. I've always suspected it was a ploy to sell more hardcover books since the internet sites like dictionary.com have become a staple of folks everywhere. There are even pop culture dictionaries online to keep people up to date with the latest in pop culture jargon, texting acronyms and assorted whatnots of the ever-evolving language.
Making up words that catch on is easy. Jeremy Lin has spawned a number of new adjectives to describe himself and the phenomenon that is himself. But, seriously, a word that means "the fear of being without a cell phone"? Yes, there is such a thing, and that fear is so real that, in addition to having a "condition" name, it also has researchers and pollsters studying it! (meanwhile, the common cold runs amok unabated).
"Nomophobia" is NOT the hysteria surrounding the ex-Dodgers pitcher from Japan. It is, however, the fear of not having access to one's cell phone (no mobile phobia). And it has been studied...at least by pollsters in Great Britain. Of course, like All in the Family and a host of other American television programs copycatted from the British, it won't be long before the Pew Research Center in the U.S. has done its own study concerning the contagion that we've just discovered is among us.
According to OnePoll, and online polling service in the U.K, 66% of people fear losing or being without their phones, up from a paltry 53% just four years ago. Granted, the survey size was small: 1,000 people, but that might encompass any number of small burgs in this country. Of the folks surveyed, 70% of the women admitted to being anxious about being disconnected while 61% of the men felt the same way. However, men were more likely to report having two phones (in case they lose or forget one) than were the women respondents. Really? Two phones? I hate having one.
As a side note, it was discovered that the age demographic MOST imbued with this nightmare vision were people between the ages of 18-24!!! Really? I love it when researchers go to great lengths to tell me something I could have hypothesized correctly in my sleep. Another shocking statistic was that people over 55 were one of the least anxious groups!
So, if you feel anxious when your phone is not within your immediate grasp, you fear losing the phone and have this thought often, you own two phones, or you take your phone to bed with you "just in case," you are the victim of nomophobia, and you should seek immediate help...no, not from the cell company! Go to allaboutcounseling.com (really? you can get anything online...free) and the nice folks there can help. On first glance, the treatment involves radical approach: begin by imagining yourself without the phone until you can do so without being anxious. seriously...you could have thought of that on your own if you hadn't been too busy obsessing about your phone.
Well, at least the survey calls and tabulation maintained a certain employment level in Great Britain.
Oh, and it gave us a new word. Look for its inclusion next year in the Oxford dictionary.
Personally, I like "cellulossis" better.

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