In all likelihood, you have at least one acquaintance who seems to be absolutely addicted to his or her smartphone even though it is not even obvious what the one is constantly using it for. Actually, it does not matter. What really matters is how annoying it can be to keep on a conversation with a person who all the time distracted by one’s gadget or, even worse, seems to be so drowned in the device that it looks like you are distracting this person from using it.
Of course it might be that you are such a person as well. Such a behaviour already has its own name coming from two English words: phone and snubbing. Learn more about phubbing and the way it makes out social life rather poor/
What is phubbing?
You have just found the meaning of the term phubbing. In the reality it means the style of having a conversation with other people which does not allow a person to focus on a real speaker as the one feels an irresistible urge to check one’s phone without a stop. It does not matter what exactly a person is using a smartphone for. It can be reading articles, scrolling profiles on social networks, texting with someone else, checking emails or playing. What is important is that such a person simply cannot focus entirely on the real conversation.
Even though phubbing is becoming extremely popular and in some places you can come across entire groups of people going out together and actually not paying any attention to each other being so absorbed in their gadgets.
As you can imagine, this can be rather disturbing.
Is phubbing the end of civilisation?
The term phubbing was created in 2012 by an Australian advertising company McCann. The company was one of the first organisations which pointed out the problem of the distortive socialising being the result of an excessive usage of smartphones.
Indeed, phubbing has a tendency of becoming a rather serious problem when it comes to socialising. Even though many people find it normal to ignore the people in front of them for the sake of using their smartphones, it should not be like that. Many people are now realising there is something very wrong with the way they are socialising because of being constantly accompanied by their gadgets. Many people simply feel isolated from the community even though they are participating in public events or meeting their friend sand relatives. Yet, the distraction of mobile phones does not allow them to fully immerse into a conversation and does not allow them to feel satisfaction which normally comes with talking to other people.
A related process is also not being able to focus on other events which are not necessarily connected with socialising. Any time a smartphone is distracting you from the real life, it is stealing your emotions and memories.
Curious facts about phubbing
McCann is very serious about studying the phenomenon of phubbing and searching for the ways to fight with it. The company is also keeping a statistics of facts related to phubbing.
Just as it has been noticed above, phibbing does not allow people to fully live through moments. This is proved by many people filling the questionnaires offered by the Australian company. For instance, 97% of respondents claimed that food seems to be less tasty when they are distracted by their smartphones. Another interesting fact is that 87% teenagers prefer contacting other people through messages rather than doing it directly.
The number of phubbers is constantly growing and, according to its characteristics of a pandemic, it could kill six time more people than the overall number of citizens of China if it were a real disease.
One more curious fact is an average number of phubbing during an evening in an average restaurant. According to the analysts of McCann there are around 36 cases.