Study Shows People Now Stress Losing Their Smartphones Almost as Much as Terrorism

You can learn a lot about a culture by taking a close look at what makes the people in that culture afraid or stressed. You can learn a lot more by figuring out how people prioritize their fears. After all, everyone around the world has the same fears and anxieties. It’s culture that tells us to fear one threat over another. As for folks living in our Western culture, apparently losing a cell phone is one of the worst things that can happen to them.

A study by the Physiological Society recently polled 2,000 people in England on what kinds of events cause them the most stress. The study was based on the Holmes and Rahe stress test, which has been around since 1967. As you might expect, people find the death of a loved one, imprisonment, and the destruction of ones home by fires and flood, to be the most stressful possibilities that they can imagine. Those are common fears that just about everyone shares, no matter the time or place.

However, the participants ranked terrorism and losing their smartphones on an almost equal footing. On a scale of 1-10, terrorist threats were given a rank of 5.84 and losing a smartphone was ranked at 5.79, after everyone’s answers were averaged.

And that sums up one of the most troubling aspects of our culture. We have a lot of the same fears as everyone else. However, we’re easily cowed by governments who push terrorism propaganda down our throats at every opportunity, and we can be devastated by the loss of an inanimate object that we’ve decided should be the linchpin of our identities and personal lives.