A wierd thing happens to me sometimes and by the chatter on social media I'm not alone. I'll be sitting at my desk, or in my car and I will feel a buzz that my phone is letting me know something is happening. I reach to look to see what it is and there's nothing. No text, no appointment reminder...nothing.

This doesn't happen all the time but enough for me to feel a bit strange. So I investigated and found that there are several names for this effect, “phantom ringing,” “phantom vibration syndrome” and "vibranxiety." In one study over 68% of the people surveyed felt it and 87% of those exprienced weekly.

The reasons are numerous. One psychologist thinks is from electrical signals coming through the phone although he's from Australia. A psychology professor from Calfornia thinks we’re anticipating some sort of technological interaction, especially with our smartphones, so we inevitably interpret some unrelated stimuli, like our pants rubbing against our leg or a chair dragging against the floor, as a phone call. I might believe that.

Any yet another scholar believes we are so addicted to our phones that we need to know what's going on and stay connected all the time. We want our phones to buzz, we need our phones to buzz so we get our body to buzz. Now we're getting somewhere...

What do you think? Does this happen to you too?