"Smartphone-Loss Anxiety Disorder" Is Not a Real Thing
Late last month, Forbes, Quartz and other outlets began sounding the alarm about "Smartphone-Loss Anxiety Disorder," a new term "coined by researchers" for an illness and confirmed "real thing" "lurking in your pocket" like some kind of deadly trouser snake.
Sufferers of this futuristic new anxiety disorder are, according to the Daily Mail, "so reliant on modern technology like smartphones, laptops and tablets, that when something goes missing they will struggle to cope emotionally."
One person disputes these findings, however: the author of the paper cited by all the above articles. As McMaster University's Zhiling Tu told Pacific Standard:
"We did not research on 'loss anxiety' or 'disorder,'" she says. "We just tried to analyze why people would cope with device loss and what factors led people to cope with such [a] security threat."
The confusion, it seems, came from a single whimsically-worded press release. "I was trying to be a little tongue-in-cheek with the headline," said author David Bradley, "but perhaps this was not the best title to choose," once again highlighting the many dangers of amateur joke-writing.
[Image via Shutterstock]
