You might have heard the term before but for me it was a new word when I heard it explained on BBC Radio 4 yesterday. It's "phubbing" - a clever conflation of "phoning" and "snubbing". "Phubbing" happens all the time when phone users ignore the people they are with in real life in favour of their phones.
Perhaps one should not blame phone users as much as we should blame the phone manufacturers and network providers. They have created an environment in which millions of people are hooked on their smartphones. For some, it is where their "best lives" reside - in favoured YouTube channels, whatsapp groups, social media and so on. All of that can, I imagine, be very comforting and less challenging than living entirely in the real world.
When Shirley and I were in Newbury, Berkshire we went to a high street eatery. Sitting upstairs in the mezzanine area, I noticed a family of six coming up the stairs. The children were teenagers. They sat at a big table near to us and checked out the menu.
After their orders were placed with the affable waitress, they did not interact as happy families used to do. Instead, all six got out their smartphones and were soon tapping away, chuckling or goggle-eyed as they studied their little screens. This went on for twenty minutes until their food orders arrived. It was as if they were drugged or hypnotised.
I myself have sometimes been a victim of phubbing. Since Shirley acquired her first smartphone she has become more and more enamoured with it and when walking in the countryside with my friend Tony, several natural conversations have been interrupted by his phone. I always feel like saying, "No! Don't answer that frigging thing. You are talking to me!"
Phubbing is yet more proof that this is a mad world. Before I leave this topic, I have a couple of side concerns to share.
All over the planet people are charging their smartphones - often daily or nightly. That's a hell of a lot of electricity being drained from our tired planet. Aren't we supposed to be conserving our resources?
Secondly, why must smartphones be continuously replaced? Manufacturing them is another huge drain on our planet's finite resources. I guess that the prime reason is to keep profits rolling in for smartphone makers like Apple and Samsung. It's a "live for today and forget about tomorrow" business model. "Screw The Earth" should probably be their shared motto.
We have remarked on this phenomenon many times over the past few years. It used to amuse us, watching couples eating out together in a restaurant but ignoring each other whilst glued to their 'phones. Now it seems everyone is doing it everywhere. Even more annoying is that everyone seems to walk around looking at their screens and not trying to avoid walking into me!!!
ReplyDeleteI think that walking around while looking at a smartphone is very stupid as it could easily lead to a mugging.
DeleteNobody bothers doing muggings any more, they're too busy with their phones
DeleteIf I was a mugger I could make a fortune.
DeleteI agree eith you on every point, and will add how dangerous it is becoming with so much false information there is. On our family meals we have a no phone whilst eating rule, but our youngest are too young for phones.
ReplyDeleteTrouble is we have made a world in which all too soon your youngest will also be drawn into The Phone Cult.
DeleteI have a cell phone, and I use it at my job every day, but when I am off work I put it down and only pick it up on the off-chance it rings--we use Carlos' phone as the way to reach both of us because he needs his with him more often than I--so I am NOT a PHUBBER? I do not PHUB.
ReplyDeleteWith your words, "PHUB" starts to sound quite salacious.
DeleteComputers play a part in most aspects of our lives. Modern people have smart phones to communicate via social media apps, emails and telephone messages. Even new cars have sat nav. I notice when on trains in England people glued to their lap tops. At airport departure lounges on my own. Nobody seems to speak to strangers and they just look at their phones. Mobile phones are companions when travelling or walking on your own I have read blogs and surf on my phone. When I am camping or at a rock festival in England it's good to use my mobile phone to talk to family. I thinking people reading books in company can be annoying. Like cars I think mobile phones are a necessary evil.
ReplyDeleteI respect your expression of a different point of view Dave.
DeleteNot a Phubber, nor do I Phub - I can't usually remember where I put my phone!
ReplyDeleteIs it in your capacious handbag along with your truncheon and your silver hip flask?
DeleteI had not heard the word, but I certainly have seen the action. Taking social media off my phone, and declaring it a Facebook free zone, really helped me to leave my phone in my pocket when I around other people. I had lunch with a long time friend the other day, and her watch kept ding-ing with emails and other messages. A good reason to wear an old fashioned dumb watch. I keep a phone until it no longer works, the last one literally went blank before I replaced it.
ReplyDeletePeople have allowed themselves to become enslaved.
DeleteI make an effort to not be on my phone when I should be interacting with my family, but I do like to be able to look things up easily, and as Northsider pointed out, when I'm eating alone while I'm out (rare), it's nice to have something to look at. We ended up getting a smart phone when Katie received an accidental overdose of one of her meds and needed to ask the other bowlers (Special Olympics bowlers), for information on the ER wait times. I also carry it with me while walking, it keeps track of how far I walk, I use the camera, and I can call 911 with it if I fell or tripped.
ReplyDeleteIt's a tool, a highly addictive tool, but still a tool than can be helpful or hurtful. We get to decide.
Your deposition has been logged by the court Ms Pixie.
DeleteI've noticed this a LOT and think it is really hurting our society. When I worked at a local college, I would see students walking between classes with their eyes on their phones instead of looking up and smiling and greeting each other. They miss so much going on around them. It bothers me how often my grown kids are looking at their phones instead of interacting with each other and their children.
ReplyDeleteWho voted for this situation? It was just foisted upon us.
DeleteAgree with you 100%. Staring at phones are becoming more important than face to face conversation. When my family is visiting, my rule is no phones at the dinner table. It works wonders for conversations.
ReplyDeleteBy being glued to their phones, a lot of people are forgetting the subtle processes of face-to-face conversation.
DeleteYou are not wrong about many things you've said here. What I don't know is how we can change that at this point. Like Pixie so many of us use our phones as a very, very handy tool, emergency device, camera (my favorite), directional guide, recipe provider, plant identifier, simple way to answer questions we may have about everything from books to weather forecasts to "who was that actor in that movie with the funny dog?"
ReplyDeleteI'm at the point in my life where I call it my back-up brain. And god, I need one.
We have come so far that I don't think we can go back.
DeleteAt the table, phones should be tucked away unless someone is on duty as a nurse or police officer and may expect to be called away anytime. When we are eating out, we sometimes take a picture to send to our families and friends as well as a memento for ourselves, but that‘s about it.
ReplyDeleteMy smartphone is essential in my daily life because it holds my train tickets etc. and allows me to find connections, check train times and the weather and take photos if I want to. Also, between my Mum, my sister and me, we have an iMessage group where we say good morning every day - a precaution to make sure our Mum is fine.
The actual phone function is what I least use on my phone, and as for social media, I am neither on insta nor facebook or tiktok or X or any of those; blogger is the only one I regularly use, but not on my phone.
You seem to have found an admirably wholesome way of living with smartphone technology Meike.
DeletePS: As for new phones, I only buy refurbished ones and only after many years of using them, usually when my relevant apps (trainline, DB Navigator, VVS) can not be updated anymore.
ReplyDeleteGood.
DeleteI could say a lot about this. Having worked with computers since 1980, the most important things I learnt early on was how addictive they are, how to turn them off, and then leave them off. I have a simple mobile phone because I'm dependent on others, but will not have a smart phone.
ReplyDeleteYou thought it all through and found your own way through the forest.
DeleteI put my phone in my purse when I'm out and don't look at it. Unfortunately, one time I did that my late mother had fallen, and people were trying to get in touch with me to let them into her house. Generally, I would much rather interact with people than my phone.
ReplyDeleteYou look back at the last three hundred thousand years and human interaction happened naturally without the presence of smartphones - until the last 25 years.
DeleteIt's become almost impossible to manage everyday life here without a smartphone these days. One's mobile phone number has become something of an extra "social security number" here and used for just about anything and everything. Like Meike I'd say that the actual phone function (talking to people) is what I use least on the device, though. Normally I talk very little on the phone, and when I go out for walks etc I usually put it on silent, and only use it as camera. The exception is if I'm expecting some important call (like if I've called someone and asked them to call me back, or if I'm meeting someone who might need to contact me before we actually meet up). But in general, I don't like talking on the phone while being "out and about" at all. Nor do I usually check for messages when I'm with someone else, unless there is some special reason.
ReplyDeleteIt's true that modern life has become much harder to navigate without a smartphone.
DeleteI have had a smart phone for many years and have a smart watch. I like the ability to check something that comes up in conversation. I agree that some people seem too glued to their phones. We have friends who always have their phones on the table and do not get through a meal without checking their phones and scrolling through something or other…How things have changed from that first fax machine off the Kings Road.
ReplyDeleteIn the span of human history, it has all happened so very quickly.
Deletefully agree with your phone upgrade/replacement observation. I try to keep mine until they stop working (which with technology being what it is, is sooner than their price would suggest is reasonable. I suspect manufacturers of being able to kill them and call it 'withdrawn support'. )
ReplyDeleteMany young people seem to view smartphones as fashion accessories. There is a pressure to keep up.
DeleteOver the course of many years, I have been annoyed, irritated, by people that I am talking to always interrupt our conversations whilst they answer a ringing phone. The principle that the phone caller takes precedence over the human in front of you seems to have been early established. Is it because originally only "important" people had telephones, and their time was "more valuable" than us mete proles? That seems to have morphed now into the almost universal behaviour you describe, with individuals that seemingly are part of a group actually behaving as just a bunch of literal individual who happen to be in close proximity?
ReplyDeleteIn this regard our attitudes are very closely aligned Will. Thank you for your comment.
DeleteHey there, found your blog via Debra's She Who Seeks. I learn a new word. I will try not to phub anyone. We indeed are hooked to smartphones. I try to do other things as much as I can: read, watch stuff on the actual television, just looked at the outside world. I try to enjoy the here and now.
ReplyDeleteWelcome Guillaume and thanks for calling by here. I do think that the verb "phub" is a useful one.
DeleteI think we've all been phubbed at one time or another... I try not to phub others though, and mostly I don't.
ReplyDeletePhubbing is simply bad-mannered.
DeleteYou touch on a very small part of this issue. You could go back to when I was a boy and we didn't have electricity. We talked in dimly lit rooms. We had very little. Now we have many more conveniences but are we wrecking things for ourselves.?
ReplyDeleteYou have witnessed more changes than I have Keith. How very different your life is now compared with when you were a farmboy in Esk. Many of the "conveniences" you refer to have been foisted upon us by profiteering businesses.
DeleteThat sketch says it all, a heartbroken child whose mother loves the phone more than the child. I know people who don't want to miss a thing are always on their phones, but they are missing something vitally important and haven't realised. Real life, trees and people and animals and weather etc.
ReplyDeleteI hate to see young parents on smartphones pushing small children and ignoring them. It is, I think, a time bomb.
DeleteIt is all down to progress surely. We are wishing our old lives to continue (for everyone) when something which appears nasty to us is taking over. Language is always being changed, for better or worse, who knows? I just retire into my own mind, which is far more interesting than anything the children are reading on their phones ;)
ReplyDeleteAs Andrew says below, "We have to learn to manage phone use appropriately". I am not asking for a return to the past as smartphones and the aids that follow them will not be going away. We should all be aware how the phone companies deliberately manipulate people. It is sinister.
DeleteI am quite conscious when with someone of restricting my phone use, but what can yu do when someone asks a question that can easily be googled? At the recent 90th birthday, two us were sending photos of the event to someone overseas who would have loved to be there. I have all digital photos stored in the cloud (and backed up), and so at a family occasion, I will be asked if I have a photo of such and such. They can take time to find. I have a quick look but if it is not a quick find, I say I will send in later. It is pointless to argue over what has already happened, and there is no turning back, but we have to learn to manage phone use appropriately. I hasten to add, my phone use is far from perfect, having missed my own tram stop a couple of times because I was engrossed in something on my phone.
ReplyDelete"We have to learn to manage phone use appropriately"... You have got it in a nutshell Andrew.
DeleteMany years ago, as a new young 'un in the workforce, I learned a great deal from my older colleagues and some of that was because we all ate and talked together in the lunch room. Phones have brought so many changes but I think the one I dislike the most is how people no longer interact that way at work.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure why it's this one thing that bugs me so much, I think because I received a lot of genuine love and care at work, some of it quite tough and also unexpected. It's a big loss in a growing up
Recognisable human beings have been on this planet for around 300,000 years - interacting, learning from each other, laughing. Smartphones have been here for just 25 years, killing a lot of what was very natural in interpersonal communication.
DeleteI have a very old phone (iPhone 6) that no longer is upgradeable and can't do many of the things I need it to do, like download tickets or use any kind of social media, so I'll soon have to invest in a newer model.... and I'll definitely look into a reconditioned model. I don't use the phone much to talk.... and I never PHUB!
ReplyDeleteI have not heard that term, but I'm always amazed (and amused) when groups of people all sit together and ignore each other. Very perplexing.
ReplyDeleteI guess you could ask the phone replacement question about any item of technology -- computers, for example. We get new computers at work every few years, even if the old ones still work fine. The new ones just have more bells and whistles (and probably better security). But I agree -- in terms of resources, it's all very worrying.
We were discussing this at lunch yesterday. My husband, daughter and son-in-law had never heard of 'phubbing.'
ReplyDeleteI have long bemoaned the young mothers ignoring their children in favour of their phones, and dog walkers oblivious to their dogs as they exercise them. What wasted opportunities with little children, to help them become observant and develop their conversational skills.