Have you ever felt a ‘phantom vibration’ from your phone? It’s a sign of addiction

Most of us spend nearly a third of our waking hours staring at smartphones – and the scariest part is we don’t even realise it.

But could you be addicted, without even knowing it?

A new study has identified something which might be a warning sign of ‘phone addiction’ – feeling that a phone is vibrating, and then finding out it actualy wasn’t.

Researchers from the University of Michigan say that the ‘phantom vibrations’ might be a sign of ‘psychological dependency on cell phone communications’

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‘When people have addictions, there’s a phenomenon in which they are hypersensitive to stimuli associated with a rewarding stimulus,’ said study author Daniel Kruge, a researcher at the University of Michigan..

‘This study provides some real insight and maybe some evidence that people can have a real dependency on cell phone use.’

The researchers interviewed 766 undergraduates about their experiences of phantom vibrations – then asked them a separate set of questions about phone addiction.

The students were asked if they agreed with statements such as ‘I have used my mobile phone to make myself feel better when I was feeling down’ and ‘I feel anxious if I have not checked for messages or switched on my mobile phone for some time’.

Kruge said, ‘I think these findings are something that can inform the discussion—and certainly, it pushes in the direction of saying, ‘Hey, whether you want to call it dependency or addiction, it’s real, it’s important, and we should be paying attention to this,.’