Did you know: phantom vibrations caused by smartphones are a thing among undergraduates

'Phantom vibration syndrome' — now how does that sound to you? It sounds all sorts of weird, we can imagine! And frankly, it is. Basically, PVS is all about experiencing perceived vibrations from a device that is not really vibrating. It's a new age disorder, first unleashed upon humanity by everyone's favorite and most ubiquitous vibrating gadget — the cellphone! However, it was really smartphones and their constant barrage of notifications that brought things to a strenuous state!

According to a joint study carried out by the Indiana and Purdue Universities, as many as 258 out of 290 participating undergraduate smartphone users have experienced phantom vibrations once every two weeks, on average. Particularly, those who had stronger emotional reactions to text messages were more often bothered by the symptoms.

It's not exactly clear how the researchers plan to combat this nightmare of a disease. However, they did eventually conclude that few undergraduates were actually that hot and bothered of phantom vibrations to warrant treatments. We also learned that emotional reactivity to texts is directly related to how bothersome those phantom vibrations are. In this case, heed our advice — don't get too emotional over your text messages and notifications. It's really not that big of a deal!