What is Ringxiety?

When you hear a ringtone of a cell phone in public places, you can observed that everybody around touches their pockets to check their phones. This is a false belief that you can hear your mobile phone ringing or vibrating. There is a term coined for this phenomenon is called "Ringxiety". If you have watched a telugu movie called 'Manmadhudu'(starring Nagarjuna), there is a similar scene in the movie in which everybody in the restaurant checks their mobile phone when phone of Nagarjuna rings.

According to David Laramie from California's School of Professional Psychology,

It is a familiar and unnerving sensation: the false belief that you can hear your mobile phone ringing or vibrating.

Now the phenomenon is so widespread it has an official name: "ringxiety". People have grown emotionally dependent on their mobiles for feelings of self-worth, claim psychologists.
So when we "hear" an imaginary ring, or think vibrations on a bus are a call, it is the subconscious calculating how popular we are.

On hearing notes similar to his phone's ring, "my brain would fill in the rest", he said. British psychologists say it is a sign the human brain is struggling to adapt to today's demands. Lancaster Centre for the Study of Media, Technology and Culture professor Michael Hulme said: "You want to feel you are being contacted."

Source