You’re sitting at work. Your phone vibrates in your pocket. As you reach for it, you look up and see your phone, sitting on the table. You’ve just experienced a phantom vibration.

You might find yourself reaching for a vibrating phone in your pocket, only to discover that it’s not there. Many of us have probably experienced this before; this common occurrence has been named ‘Phantom Vibration Syndrome’. Think about it: how many times have you checked your phone today for messages, despite no sign or signal that there’s one waiting in the inbox? What’s going on in your brain that leads you to think that the message came through without noticing? Or, worse still, what makes you think that the messages will somehow flow in faster if you check your phone more frequently?

What triggers it?

In a study on smoking, it was found that the Mirror Neurons in the brains would kick-start a chain reaction in the smoker’s brain, which would induce craving sensations. In other words, whenever smokers observe another smoking, there’s no opt-out because the tobacco user’s brain is hardwired to be seduced into lighting a cigarette. You might ask what this has to do with mobile phones. It’s probably the exact same brain reaction whenever we switch on our phone. Cast your mind back to the last time you spent casually chatting around a table with a group of friends. Think about what happens when someone checks their mobile phone for messages. In a matter of moments, a few others in the group feel around for their phones and check their screens too. If you were to ask them what prompted them to check at that particular moment, they’d have no idea. Apart from habit, Phantom Vibration Syndrome is also about not being fully present. As much as we all believe we’re skilled multi-taskers, this isn’t the case. Quite simply, we’re no longer fully present; emotionally as opposed to physically. We think we are, we believe we’re participating in the conversation but in reality we’re not.

So the moment you realise that you’ve fallen victim to the Phantom Vibration Syndrome, you should be aware that it’s more than a pulsing sensation in the pockets. The risk is that you might find yourself checking your messages in response to someone doing the same, no longer fully present in the real world.

Studies on phantom vibrations

Larry Rosen, a professor of psychology at California State University offers a different idea in his book, iDisorder. He says that since we’re almost always anticipating some sort of technological interaction, especially with our smartphone, we inevitably interpret some unrelated stimuli like a chair dragging against the floor, as a phone. The only study on phantom vibrations focused on gauging vibranxiety’s prevalence, and didn’t examine the cause. However, researchers offered an educated guess similar to Rosen’s. Michael Rothberg, a clinician investigator at Baystate Medical Centre in Springfield, Massachusetts says that vibranxiety might be caused by the misinterpretation of sensory signals in our brain. “With the phantom vibrations, the brain sometimes misinterprets sensory input according to the preconceived hypothesis that a vibrating sensation will be coming from the phone. In other words, it seems smartphone users are just so primed for, and attentive to, the sensation of their phone going off that they simply experience the occasional false alarm.”

The study conducted by the Medical Centre described the imagined ring as a hallucination that 68% of the medical centre’s staff had experienced it. 87% of those people felt the vibrations weekly. 13% felt it daily. The question is - can we stop it? According to the Baystate studies, 39% of the test subjects were able to stop the vibrations by taking their device off of vibrate mode and just using an audible ringer or changing where they kept the phone. Another option is to just trust your ears and just step away from the phone until it rings or beeps for real.

Another research led by IU-PU (Indiana University-Purdue University) Fort Wayne’s Michelle Drouin was published in the journal of Computer in Human Behaviour, and is only the third study covering the topic. The study showed that 89% of undergrad participants in this current study had felt phantom vibrations. In previous studies like the 2007 doctoral thesis which surveyed the general population and the previously mentioned survey in Massachusetts – majorities experienced phantom vibrations. This latest survey of undergrads and medical professional agree; about 10% experience phantom vibration every day. 88% of the doctors, felt vibration between a weekly and monthly basis. 91% of the respondents in this latest survey said the vibrations bothered them slightly to not at all. Also, 93% of the Massachusetts hospital workers felt similarly saying they were slightly or not at all bothered. This where age difference start showing. More than 80% of the undergrads made no attempt to stop phantom vibration. This doesn’t match the hospital workers’ number all. Almost two-thirds of them tried to stop the vibrations. Droulin’s study found that a strong emotional reaction predicted how frustrating one finds phantom vibrations. People who react more emotionally to social stimuli are more likely to react emotionally to social texts.

At the moment the technology doesn’t exist to measure individuals’ perception of phantom vibrations however they hope to apply brain scanning techniques in the future. Perhaps better technology will develop which will make phantom vibration reporting possible.