How many times were you scolded by your parents or elders for phone snubbing? While travelling in a local bus, how many times have you talked to your seatmate since the advent of the smart phone? Or, did you even look at the person sitting beside you? While sitting with your friends, family, and relatives, how often did you miss an important conversation because you were absorbed in your phone? Why has it happened that we remain in touch with our friends and relatives who are far away from us, and ignore those who live with us?
Have we ever asked ourselves what impact it has on the persons whom we are ignoring for the sake of remaining on phone? How many times have others ignored us while snubbing on their phones? Consequently, we have all become both perpetrators and victims of phubbing.
What Exactly Is Phubbing?
As we all know that language is always evolving and new words are being created every now and then. In May 2012, Australia’s Macquarie Dictionary and the McCann advertising agency brought together a group of language experts to name the phenomenon of ignoring the person in front of you in favour of your phone. They connected the words, phone and snubbing and thus named it as “Phubbing.” It is defined as “the act of snubbing someone in a social setting by looking at your phone instead of paying attention.”
Have we counted how much time we spend on our phones in a particular day? No, we haven’t. We are so consumed by phubbing that our muscle memory has been synced to it. Often, we find our hands taking out the phones from our pockets’ without any purpose.
“Phubbing is the act of ignoring
the person in front of you in
favour of your phone.”
Our interaction with the smartphones has reached to the level where we prefer seeing meaningless videos, playing useless games, texting for no reason than listening or talking to our loved ones.
How Is It Affecting Our Relationships?
Look at us, our relationships with other people are based on status updates on social media. Where has the ability to talk face-to-face with a person gone? Studies have shown that we are happiest when we are present in what we are doing. But, do you really think we are present at one place these days? Is there a connection between the anger that is bulging inside us and our mental absence at the place where we are present?
In any conversation, eye contact is an intimate form of connection. Posture and minute facial expressions communicate more than words.
However, when we are phubbing we miss all this. Contrarily, it creates a sense of disgust in all of us when someone is not listening properly or when we are not being heard the way humans do.
Moreover, we lose the ability to sense what the other person is feeling. Without presence, openness, observation, compassion and vulnerability, how will we reach at the root of empathy?
Now, next time when you have someone around and you feel that urge of taking your phone out of your pocket, remember: Stop. Don’t be a phubber. Don’t follow that irresistible impulse of connecting to your phone and excluding others from yourself. Sociological studies have long been showing the alarming rise of loneliness in modern societies. Talk, listen, make eye contact and thrive in each other’s presence.
Misconceptions: However, since most of the services are transferred through mails and messages, we must not accuse others of phubbing when they are only doing their work. We must understand that they are not doing it with malicious intent.
You can spot a phubber if:
They have their phone out and close to them all the time, when they are with some other human.
They keep their conversation short because their sole attention is on the beeps and alerts of their phone.
They cut you short only to respond to their unimportant calls on the phone.
They check their phone even if there is a minute lull in the conversation.
You are watching TV together and he picks up his phone when an ad breaks.
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