Phubbing, a virus that damages face-to-face relationships

What goes through each emotional brain when someone you talk to face to face diverts their attention to their cell phone and starts answering messages or checking their social networks?

It is a situation that, because it is frequent, is accepted as normal in relationships, whatever they may be.

However, like the prohibition and social condemnation of smoking in closed places, it will not be long before the use of cell phones is regulated in some way.

It involves more than half of the planet’s population and 90% of the inhabitants of Argentina who use cell phones, according to the Permanent Household Survey (EPH), together with the provincial statistics directorates (DPE).

An evaluation carried out in 2016 already predicted that the way we relate to each other was in a process of constant change on a global level, where no less than 3.79 billion smartphone users live together.

Regarding the social use of the telephone, 42% accessed networks regularly at the time of the study, in order to interact with others.

Exceptions occur, for example, in some public organizations, banks and conference and concert halls, in which the concentration of audiences imposes the prohibition of keeping them on.

But in addition to being able to interpret interruptions in any personal, intimate, family, work, social and even circumstantial relationship as inconsideration or lack of respect, although tolerated, they carry serious implications, even at odds with mental health.

Many research works have been carried out, such as that of the University of Münster, in Germany, which reveal that this practice can generate feelings of “distrust and ostracism” among people who suffer from it.

Or worse, as James Roberts and Meredith David of Baylor University discovered, when someone is displaced during a face-to-face encounter, they feel a sense of social exclusion that leads to a greater need for attention.

And paradoxically, the snubbed takes revenge for the frustrated need for attention he suffers, even if he does not interact directly, with the person who “ignored” him. Or “no phone call,” as we call the act of indifference to answering the cell phone.

The proven reaction is that you end up channeling it on social media, hoping to regain a broader sense of inclusion.

If telephone slights diversify and multiply in the chains of relationships, the transmission pulley becomes unhealthy and alters the communication codes.

Roberts and David studied in 2016 the effects of partner phubbing or p-phubbing, as it has been known since 2012, when the Australian dictionary Macquaire, in order to describe a social phenomenon that had not existed for many years, launched a campaign around the world dedicated to familiarizing the population with the word phubbing.

It combines phone and snubbing, a term that refers to the fact that, in a social gathering, someone ignores a person for paying attention to the mobile phone while talking face to face.

Interrupting to look at the cell phone during a conversation loses sight of the circumstances and even becomes a common practice in marriages or romantic couples and even exposes them, unconsciously, to risk areas.

Varoth Chotpitayasunondh and Karen Douglas investigated the psychological causes and consequences of this behavior and discovered that, as could be intuitively predicted, one of the reasons that leads us to deliberately ignore the person we are with is mobile phone addiction. .

Due to the attachment needs of human beings, these authors hypothesize that for a quality relationship to occur: the sole presence of the couple is not enough, but certain emotional exchanges are necessary that must be reciprocal.

As the use and presence of smartphones advances, attachment and attention needs may not be met in the same way they would have been without the interference of certain technologies.

Modern modes of communication, such as mobile devices, create new sites for decorous and indecorous behavior, new types of etiquette and transgression, and have perhaps unexpected impacts on their consumers.

The psychologist specialized in neuroscience and online therapy, Marian Durao, addressed the issue by urging us to incessantly ask ourselves “if our decisions are based on our real desires and needs or if we are being driven by the fear of missing out on something.”

He attributes the appearance of a syndrome called FoMO (Fear of Being Left Out) to the digital world as a direct result.

It invites us to recognize and understand “how modern insecurity influences our lives, intensifying our perception of being permanently on the margins.”

He warns that, in this context, “social networks become a fertile field where our anxiety grows to always be connected and aware, fearing losing something that others enjoy or achieve.”

He links it with the need for approval and acceptance from other human beings, and in this framework, he concludes that comparison with others plays a crucial role in self-evaluation.

“If we spend hours looking at posts that lead us to think that others are happier, more successful and perform better in life, it will probably negatively affect our self-concept,” as he explains this desire to be online as much as possible.

The scene is reproduced in every corner of daily life: whether because an alarm sounded, the screen turned on or a message arrived.

Phubbing can be incited in various ways but it always ends the same way: with a secondary participant feeling excluded by someone who diverted all their attention to the smartphone.

For most of human evolution, being connected to other people meant being in their direct line of sight.

Then, about 2,500 years ago, we began writing to each other, expanding the footprint of connection.

Later technologies deepened it, but all provided episodic connectivity between people in fixed locations, usually by speech or writing.

The mobile and fast culture that has been imposed forces us to practice mental zapping that disperses any human mind.