Classification Notice for Imagined Phone Buzz
Imagined phone buzz is classified as a phantom notification response with no stimulus and no resolution pathway.
SUBJECT: Imagined Phone Buzz CLASSIFICATION: Phantom Notification Response, Category I (Involuntary) EFFECTIVE DATE: January 2023
WHAT IS BEING CLASSIFIED
Imagined phone buzz refers to the physical sensation of a phone vibrating when no vibration has occurred, followed by a check of the device. Someone checks a phone after feeling a vibration that did not happen. They look at the screen. Nothing is there. This resolves nothing. The sensation recurs.
CRITERIA FOR CLASSIFICATION
A behavior qualifies for this classification when the stimulus is absent and the response is unchanged. Imagined phone buzz meets this criterion by definition. No alert was sent. No system generated the input. The body generated it instead, drawing on a pattern established by years of real alerts.
OBSERVED CONSEQUENCES
Imagined phone buzz steals one extra check of the screen. This is the primary consequence and it is consistent. Secondary: the check becomes habitual even after alerts are muted. The vibration is imagined. The mute setting is real. Both are present simultaneously. The alert is called noise while ignoring it creates more attention. Imagined phone buzz extends this logic to the hardware level. No alert required.
GOVERNING RULE
Under the governing rule, imagined phone buzz becomes procedure once repetition feels safer than reconsidering it. The body cannot be set to silent. Attention management turns into another inbox. This inbox has no clear messages, only the sensation of messages.
DISPOSITION
This classification is informational. No intervention is specified. The behavior is not pathological in clinical terms and is sufficiently widespread to be ambient. The committee notes it without recommendation.