Are you a phubber? If you can’t help but keep checking your cell phone while you are with family or friends, then yes you are! In addition to being rude, this is a worrying trend.
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Phubbing is a word invented in 2012 by an English communication agency; it’s the contraction of the words ‘phone’ and ‘snob.’ This phenomenon is the subject of a publication in the very serious Journal of Applied Social Psychology.
Vanessa Lalo, clinical psychologist specialising in the use of digital devices, provides an explanation. ‘It is not a conscious decision. More often than not when you take out your smartphone, it is done automatically. But today if you have one in your pocket, you have the obligation to answer it. Otherwise you are a bad friend, a bad spouse, a bad employee, a bad human being. It is not a matter of politeness, smartphones allow us to be connected but they are a permanent umbilical cord.’
Burnt-out
Could phubbing harm social relations? Yes, according to digital sociologist Catherine Lejealle, who told BFM that ‘If you do not know how to resist the alert, it's more exhausting for you than it is about being rude. This habit which fragments your attention and what you are doing will generate problems when it comes to concentration and fatigue. You are asking your brain to consistently jump from activity to activity. We get unnecessarily tired, our brains overheat, and we become burnt-out.
Vanessa Lalo seems to agree with her colleague. ‘We touch our smartphones about 300 times a day. It’s the great curse of the 21st century, because it creates people who will eventually crack,’ she says. But don’t panic, the expert has some advice. ‘Take control of your digital life back. As a human being, we need to have moments of boredom, moments when we don’t do anything.’ Now that you know what phubbing is, try to avoid it as much as possible!
