Item — HN Reader

"Nomophobia, the fear of low battery on phones, is virtually nonexistent in China, thanks to the widespread availability of power bank stations"

Actually nomophobia is more than a fear of low battery - it is a fear of being without a working mobile phone, e.g. due to loss of phone, poor signal or low battery. It is more of a psychological condition, and proper treatment is to address the root cause rather than avoid the situation - it would be like saying heroin addiction is not a problem because there are heroin dealers on every street corner.

1 comments

I think this is a valid thing to worry about.

It's almost the same thing as worrying about a car breaking down if you're 100 miles from the nearest town.

Yet we don't have a specific "fobia" for that, because it's really not a mental disorder to worry about such things.

So many things today depend on having a working mobile phone.

Curious to hear your thoughts/experience about the 'many things today depend on having a working mobile phone'. I often do not carry a phone because I use my laptop at home/office to do most digital things.

In certain situations people are so used to perform certain actions on their phones that they're caught by surprise if the phone is dead.

Boarding a train or bus, for example. You can pay using your phone, if it dies on your way and you don't have cash, that's a problem.

When you put on GPS to drive somewhere, and the phone dies midway. None has city maps anymore.

Making last minute plan changes in a group. If you don't have your phone, you won't get the latest messages.

Myself for example I've stopped carrying a debit card to withdraw money from ATMs because my banking app generates a code that I can use it.

And many others. Now I know _every single one_ of these has a work around, but most of them are "just plan ahead and have an alternative if your phone dies". After years and years of just using phones, people simply don't carry around cash or quarters for a phone call anymore.

It's not the phone itself, it's the device which gives you an instant connection to anyone around the planet at all times. The modem in the phone is what makes it valuable. If something happens, you can call for help, you can call your spouse to let them know you're late, you can get routed around traffic jams, look up contacts, etc. I can do all of that with a laptop too if it had a mobile internet connection.

Not to mention that I need it for 2FA.

My phone runs 2FA for almost everything. Missing my hard 2FA token, my phone is my only way of accessing a lot of stuff that I usually only have on my phone.

When my phone (5X) bootlooped on a trip (before I had the hard token) and I needed to access my email for plane ticket info/etc, I couldn't 2FA into anything.. I had to remember what airline I was flying, call them, then sort out details I was relying on having on my calendar or in my email.

Legit panic as I couldn't miss work and had spent hundreds on travel arrangements. I learned my lesson and got a backup hard token (and a backup for the backup that sits in a lock box) and I should probably drop the phone based 2FA as well for just the hard token but it is very convenient.

I'd say navigating on long road trips is one of them. While my current car has a built-in GPS, my previous one didn't, and so I was somewhat dependent on having a working phone in order to navigate.

Now, only somewhat. I generally know how to get home from where I am, and I figure if my phone were to fail, I could drive until I could find a gas station with a map. (Or perhaps a convenience store to get a charger cable or new phone.)

And of course, this fear (of being phoneless) is just an update of an old one (of being lost). It's really hard to get lost in the modern world of gps and data.

You don't need GPS to navigate, but without one you'll want to own a decent map.

Before GPS people just carried paper maps in their cars. It's harder to find paper maps at a gas station now, but if you're preparing for a long road trip, it's not a terrible idea to just bring along a paper map to start with.

There was also an intermediate period between everyone using paper maps and everyone using GPS. I didn't get my first phone until I was 23, before that for trips I just printed out the google maps directions and some map screenshots of nearby areas to the destination or stops along the way. Usually didn't even need that because the US interstate system is well labeled with road signs. These days I like an online maps navigation just to tell me about upcoming slowdowns or better routes, find the cheapest gas stations, etc.

2FA is the main thing for me. I protect basically all my important logins with 2FA, so losing my phone can mean getting locked out of most of my important accounts. This mostly scares me when traveling—I agree it's pretty nice to not carry a phone some of the time.

A personal example is that where I live, Uber has basically exterminated yellow cabs. So if your phone is dead and you can’t get an Uber, you’ve got no chance of flagging a yellow cab like you could do ten years ago. So if you have to get somewhere, you’re screwed.

I'm a native digital. I have weird memory patterns: I remember the information I need by search query. I just can't remember anything I know I can find on demand. I'm literally useless as a brick without access to internet.

Ah, you're right. So what I should have said is 'depend on having a working computer'.

I can't even begin to list the things; everything.