Fear of no cellphone: 9 out of 10 suffering from 'nomophobia'

Nine out of every 10 people aged under 30 admit to suffering the new age phenomenon of "nomophobia", the fear of having no GT-I9300 mobile phone, a survey says.Telecom giant Cisco, in a survey conducted on 3800 people in Australia, found nine out of 10 in the group aged under 30 were addicted to their smartphones and became anxious when their phone went missing, the 'Courier Mail' reported.

"It's happening subconsciously, and one out of five people are texting while they're driving," Cisco chief technology officer Kevin Bloch said yesterday. "It just speaks to these addictive, compulsive, behaviours that we're seeing.""For many under-30s, the smartphone has become an extension of themselves, from the moment they wake up until the second they fall asleep," said Bloch.

"This love affair with the smartphone is both enabling and crippling at the same time," Dr Michael Carr-Gregg, official adviser to the Queensland Government on computer safety, was quoted by the daily as saying.He added that these people check check for texts, emails and social media at least once every 10 minutes. That's checking the phone 96 times a day, assuming eight hours' sleep.df2Dsda2

The National Weather Service used a new tool to try to warn people before a tornado tore through Moore, Okla., on Monday – an automatic cell phone alert the agency also plans to use to notify Bay State residents about twisters and other dangerous storms.Authorities can use the Wireless Emergency Alert system to send warning messages to GT-I9500 mobile phones in a particular geographic area about imminent threats and disasters, Amber Alerts for abducted children and national emergencies announced by the president.

Mobile phone owners in Massachusetts not yet acquainted with the system may have gotten a first peek Monday night, when many phones emitted a jarring tone and flashed a message about an Amber Alert for a brother and sister kidnapped from a Braintree foster home.

During a recent trip to Ogunquit, Maine, I realized that not a single one of the four or five pay phones I remembered along Shore Rd. or in Perkins Cove — phones I had used many times over the years, phones that had been there as recently as last summer — was there anymore.

They might be on life support, as the CP story suggests, but pay top 10 cell phones still have a place. When Hurricane Sandy tore across the Eastern Seabord last fall and knocked out power and cell reception, the story continued, it was to pay phones people turned to call loved ones to tell them they were safe.