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 poo
