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  • [MUSIC]

  • What is phantom vibration syndrome?

  • It's when you feel your phone vibrating in your pocket as if you're receiving a call

  • or text, but you pull your phone out and you look at it and it never actually rang.

  • Studies are finding that while most don't find this to be very bothersome, a lot of

  • people are experiencing this.

  • A recent study of undergraduates found that almost 90% are experiencing this hallucination.

  • So, the question is, "Why? Why is this happening to us?"

  • Some claim that technologies like the phone are somehow rewiring our brains, but I think

  • that a better way to understand the phone and other technologies is in terms of learned

  • bodily habits.

  • Think about wearing a pair of glasses.

  • If you're accustomed to your glasses and they almost become a part of you, you can forget

  • that you're even wearing them sometimes.

  • The phone in your pocket is like this.

  • Through bodily habit, your phone actually becomes a part of you and you become trained

  • to perceive the phone's vibrations as an incoming call or text.

  • So, due to these kinds of habits, it becomes really easy to misperceive other similar sensations.

  • Phone sifts around in your pocket, "I'm getting a call."

  • Your pant leg rustles, "I'm getting a text."

  • You have a muscle spasm in your leg, "I'm getting another call again."

  • But the whole time, just a phantom vibration.

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