Genetic and Environmental Sources of Nomophobia: A Small-Scale Turkish Twin Study

Abstract

Nomophobia is considered to be a form of behavioral addiction, namely the fear of being out of mobilephone contact. Despite many studies on the prevalence and correlates of mobile phone addiction, not muchis known about its etiological nature. The purpose of this study is to reveal the extent to which nomophobiais affected by genetic and environmental factors. The participants were 125 Turkish twin-pairs. Nomophobiawas measured using the Nomophobia Questionnaire (NMP-Q). The monozygotic (MZ) twin correlationswere larger than the dizygotic (DZ) twin correlations in the sub-dimensions of losing connectedness (Factor2) and giving up convenience (Factor 4), as well as for the overall questionnaire NMP-Total, showing thatgenetic factors affected scores on these measures. However, the MZ twin correlations were equal to orsmaller than the DZ twin correlations in the sub-dimensions of not being able to communicate (Factor 1)and not being able to access (Factor 3), demonstrating that genetic factors did not play a role in the scoreson these sub-dimensions. The role of both genetic and environmental factors was investigated using modelfitting analysis. The results indicate the models with best fit to be the ADE models for the sub-dimensionsof losing connectedness and giving up convenience, and NMP-Total scores.