Phub you: how phones make us bad company

So, you’ve been phubbed. Or maybe you did the phubbing. Maybe it was mutual.

It doesn’t matter who started it, phubbing is bad, bad, bad. Didn’t your mama raise you better?

The word “phubbing” was invented to describe “phone snubbing”: the act of ignoring someone in front of you in favour of your phone. Phubbing recently celebrated its tenth birthday. That is to say, the word was invented about ten years ago, in May 2012.

The Macquarie Dictionary, the first and last word on Australian English, hired advertising agency McCann to come up with a new word to express this horrible show of bad manners (at best) and profound social alienation (at worst).

The word was invented primarily for the purposes of a campaign to raise awareness of the issue and – it was hoped – curtail it. The campaign seems to have been more successful at the former goal than the latter.

If you read anything else about phubbing, you’ll probably come across references to a 2016 study in the journal Computers in Human Behaviour titled “How ‘phubbing’ becomes the norm: The antecedents and consequences of snubbing via smartphone.”

This study found more than 40 per cent of its respondents reported phubbing others several times a day; more than 50 per cent of respondents reported being phubbed multiple times per day.

Even more studies have found phone snubbing can make conversations and even marriages less satisfying. One, about couples in China, determined that phubbing is a risk factor for depression in longer-term marriages (defined as those lasting more than seven years).

Imagine all the things we think weaken our relationships. Think of how fortunate we think people are when they make it past the seven year itch. Now consider losing all that because we can’t take our eyes off Twitter.

In 2018, a study in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology found that phone snubbing has a detrimental effect on what was described as four “fundamental needs”: belongingness, self-esteem, meaningful existence, and control.

In other words, being phubbed makes us feel excluded, diminished, or insignificant – not particularly healthy feelings to introduce to any relationship.

And what is an all-too easy consolation if you find yourself on the receiving end of a phub?

The comfort of your own phone, of course. Thus phubbing breeds phubbing: an epidemic is born.

You may think this isn’t such a concern for us here in TT, but according to data compiled by the World Bank, TT’s estimated mobile phone subscriptions in 2020 were 142 per 100 people. That is more phones per capita than the same data estimates for the European Union (121 subscriptions per 100 people) and the US (106 subscriptions per 100 people).

Is there a word for what that can become? Chain phubbing? Group phubbing? Phub-a-thons?

The 2016 smartphone snubbing study mentioned earlier found three key predictors of phubbing: internet addiction, fear of missing out (or FOMO – yes, it’s not just a thing the kids say, it’s the subject of legitimate scientific inquiry) and poor self-control (itself a factor in addictive behaviours).

Phubbing is not considered an addiction per se, rather it’s a function of a lack of impulse control perhaps exacerbated by internet or smartphone addiction. So, if you are fixated on monitoring social media channels, WhatsApp groups, checking for e-mail or football scores and you use your phone to do it, you might well be a phubber.

I want to say the good news is that controlling phubbing can be as simple as putting the phone down.

But it’s not. You’ve had this experience already. It’s not lost on you.

You and the family – or worse, you and a date – or worser, you and your boss – go to dinner. You sit down and as you do, you take your phone and rest it neatly on the table next to the cutlery. Maybe the other person does the same.

What that translates to in simple-human (that’s a language I’m working on inventing) is: It’s great to be here with you. I hope you don’t mind if all my social connections and personal interests join us at the table.

What are we left with? We need to manners-up. Keep phones turned off and out of sight during meals or leave your phone in the car when stepping out for a date or a meeting. Pay a little more attention to the person in front of you and less to the plastic rectangle in your pocket. Tune into the real and tune out the virtual.

Phones are friends not foes. Until they are. Or until they start to signal more harmful behavioural traits.

Remember to talk to your doctor or therapist if you want to know more about what you read here. In many cases, there’s no single solution or diagnosis to a mental health concern. Many people suffer from more than one condition.