Technology & Modern Life · 17 entries
Technology and Modern Life Fears
Phones, machines, artificial intelligence, radiation and being unreachable. This is a drawer, and it is documented as one: the fears filed here share a period rather than a mechanism, and several of the terms were coined by market research rather than by clinicians. That is not a reason to leave them out. It is the reason each entry says who made the word and when.
Nomophobia is the case that shows why the dating matters. It was coined twice: once in 1803 for an aversion to laws, and again in 2008 when a survey reused the letters for something else entirely. Zoom fatigue arrived with a measurable event behind it rather than as a coinage looking for one. Doomscrolling is a 2020 word for a behaviour described in the 1970s under a different name. What the group has in common is that the naming is recent and the mechanism usually is not.
In this category
All 17 technology and modern life fears
17 entries
- Distrust of AlgorithmsAlgorithm aversion is rejecting from a system the advice you would take from a person. It reverses by task, which is what makes it a judgement rather than a fear.
- DoomscrollingDoomscrolling is reading bad news past the point where it helps. The word arrived in 2018, the behaviour was measured in the 1970s as mean world syndrome.
- Fear of Being Without a PhoneThe Oxford English Dictionary records nomophobia from 1803, meaning fear of laws. The phone version is a portmanteau produced by a survey in 2008.
- Fear of ChemicalsBy weight, 99.99 per cent of the pesticides in a diet are grown by the plants, and twenty-nine of the fifty-seven natural ones tested cause cancer in rodents.
- Fear of MachinesShredders, grinders, chainsaws and overlockers are the named triggers, and the usual route in is an accident. A 1931 book blamed sexual incompetence.
- Fear of Nuclear WarNewcomb's 1986 instrument scored nuclear denial alongside nuclear worry, and the literature admits its 1980s findings cannot now be replicated.
- Fear of Phone CallsA 2024 UK survey found a quarter of eighteen to thirty-four year olds had never once picked up an incoming call to their own mobile phone.
- Fear of RadiationChernobyl evacuees lost seven years of life expectancy, and a radiation specialist names depression, alcoholism and suicide rather than cancer.
- Fear of RobotsSeven fear categories came out of 49 studies, and only one is about how the robot looks. One of the other six is a fear of coming to rely on it.
- Fear of Robots Turning Against UsAsimov coined it in 1947 and conceded in the same story that the fear had a certain justification, which is why the First Law exists at all.
- Fear of TechnologyParliament made demolishing a machine a capital offence in 1727, and the Luddites, who arrived later, objected to something more specific than machines.
- Fear of Wi-Fi and Electromagnetic FieldsResidents blamed a South African cell tower for their symptoms, and the operator told the meeting it had been switched off six weeks earlier.
- Health Anxiety From Online SearchingTwo in five say the web raises their medical anxiety and about half say it lowers it. The condition is a minority outcome of a majority behaviour.
- Phantom Phone VibrationsMichael Rothberg calls it a tactile hallucination, and up to nine in ten people get it. The sensation has to be learned first, over one month to a year.
- Range AnxietyCoined in print in 1997 about GM EV1 drivers, trademarked for by General Motors in 2010. The AAA's stated cure is owning an electric vehicle.
- TechnostressOlder workers report less technology stress than younger ones, and women report less than men. Only computer literacy behaves the way anyone expects.
- Zoom FatigueA condition with a growth curve behind it. The pain is in the neck and shoulders, and one survey found seventy-two per cent of respondents working from bed.
Keep going
The other categories
- Social & InterpersonalFears whose object is other people: being judged by them, being among them, or being without them.
- The Body, Illness & DeathDeath, dying, disease, contamination, ageing and the body itself.
- Abstract & ExistentialFailure, the future, change, infinity, being forgotten.
- Places & SituationsEnclosed spaces, crowds, bridges, lifts, tunnels and flight.
Common questions
Questions about technology and modern life fears
What is nomophobia?
The fear of being without a phone, named in a 2008 survey. The word had already been used in 1803 for an aversion to laws, so it is a coinage twice over with no relation between the two senses, and the entry gives both dates rather than the one that flatters the term.
Are technology phobias real conditions?
None of them is named in DSM-5-TR or ICD-11. Several carry genuine research anyway: technostress, zoom fatigue and algorithm aversion all have measurement behind them, which is why they are labelled studied here. What none of them has is a diagnostic code, and the entries say so rather than implying one.
Is doomscrolling a new behaviour?
The word is from 2020; the behaviour was described in the 1970s under a different name and without a screen. That gap is the reason this category exists as a period rather than as a mechanism, and it recurs across most of the terms filed here.
What is the fear of artificial intelligence called?
Robophobia for machines that act, and the Frankenstein complex for the narrower fear of them turning against us. Both are documented rather than recognised. Algorithm aversion is the studied cousin: the finding that the same advice is rejected from a system and accepted from a person.