Unwinding the Cord

Unwinding the Cord introduces Mobile Media Tethering as a new framework for understanding persistent attachment to smartphones beyond traditional addiction models. Through the development and validation of the Mobile Media Tethering Questionnaire (MMTQ), the study identifies four dimensions of tethering—habitual use, cognitive absorption, nomophobia, and somatic consequences—and argues that constant connectivity is best understood as a behavioral and sociotechnical condition embedded in everyday life rather than solely as individual pathology.