Apple's New iPhone Design is Triggering Trypophobia in Tons of People—Here's What That Means

Apple announced its latest iPhone, the iPhone 11 Pro, and just as you’d expect, this phone has it all. The new model has six colors, a longer battery life, and as you’d expect, a better camera. But it’s not just the quality of the camera that has people talking: the phone’s three camera lenses are really freaking people out. 

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On Tuesday, the company released images of the new phone, which shows a "triple camera system" that reportedly will improve the quality of iPhone photos. But shortly after the images circulated on the internet, people took to Twitter to remark on how the three-camera display is triggering their trypophobia, aka, an irrational fear of clusters of holes or bumps.

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Trypophobia, as Health's contributing psychology editor Gail Saltz, MD, previously said, is a fear of clusters of holes "that is intense enough to cause symptoms of pain, and causes the person to avoid the feared thing."

While it is not officially recognized as a medical diagnosis or listed in the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), the term has been circulating on the Internet since 2009.

A 2013 article in the journal Psychological Science addressed the fear, and concluded that the phobia might be the result of evolutionary adaptation, since images that induce trypohobia share visual characteristics with a range of poisonous organisms (like snakes and spiders). A 2017 investigation in the Brazilian Journal of Psychiatry also found that the majority of individuals with trypophobia experienced disgust rather than fear when confronted with clusters of holes.

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Dr. Saltz explained that phobias are often treated with exposure therapy, where a person is slowly exposed to their fear of until they become desensitized to it. She says, however, that this is really only meant for irrational fears. “If you are just disgusted by something, that may not change," she said.

Health reached out to Apple for a comment on the iPhone 11 Pro's design. Regardless, if you suffer from typophobia, this new design might have you opting to stick with your iPhone 10—at least for right now. 

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Source: Mind & Body