WHILE reading this story you will probably think about checking social media, even if you think you won’t.

A student at the University of Westminster’s Harrow campus has found that her classmates exaggerated the extent of their social media addiction and so robbed them of their smartphones to prove it.

Irina Gonta, who is in the final year of a public relations degree, said: “I wanted to test students’ reactions when their phones were taken away for an hour. In the survey only seven per cent checked social media every five minutes but this seemed at odds with reality. They were really anxious at the end of the experiment. I have seen that a 'fear of missing out' (FOMO) has been trending and I wanted to see if FOMO is real.”

She initially conducted a survey of 100 students at London universities and found that only seven per cent of them said they checked social media every five minutes.

This didn’t seem right as she noticed how often all of them checked their phones in lectures, while having lunch or talking to friends.

Students at the University of Westminster with their phones after they were taken away for a social media experiment.

The student, originally from Romania, then asked the tutor to take away the smartphones of the 23 pupils present at the lecture at the Harrow campus of the University of Westminster under the guise of security and at the end of the hour asked them how they felt.

Miss Gonta said: “They were taken by surprise, I wanted to see their reaction and 15 out of the 23 said they were lost and anxious. They confirmed that they are addicted to social media. At the end they were really happy to have them back.”

Sixty-five per cent said they felt lost and anxious without their phone, 22 per cent felt out of touch and only 13 per cent said they did not care if they were unable to check their notifications.

This was compared with 11 per cent in the original survey saying they felt anxious if they weren’t able to check their phone for an hour.

Most of the students said they checked texts first, then WhatsApp notifications then emails, with Facebook trailing behind.

Student Magdalena Atanasova, said, “I got anxious because I’m used to checking my phone every five minutes.”

Miss Gonta is working on her final project and is researching the validity of “FOMO”, fear of missing out, which is defined by the Oxford Dictionary an anxiety that an exciting or interesting event may currently be happening elsewhere, often aroused by posts seen on a social media website.

FOMO written in the smartphones taken from students in their lecture at the University of Westminster. FOMO is a 'fear of missing out'