Phones at the Table

“I’m trying to talk to you, why are you always on your phone?”

“Hello? I’m right in front of you…”

“Would it kill you to at least acknowledge me for a second?”

The Phubbing Epidemic

The term “phubbing” is defined as the practice of ignoring one’s companions at the present moment in order to pay attention to one’s own phone or mobile device. The word “phubber” is used to describe a person who pays too much attention to his mobile device. This word is similar but not synonymous to other statements like “cell phone zombie” or “phone addict”.

I often find myself walking by restaurants and stumbling across people who are always on their phones while at the meal table with their loved ones or dates. Here’s a quick story;

One time while eating outside at one of my favorite restaurants, I saw a couple on a date. They were young, at about their mid-20s, and are pretty well dressed too. This particular restaurant was very posh, and an excellent place to observe people. After a few seconds of observation though, it appeared as though the date wasn’t going all too well. You know that vibe you get when you suddenly run out of momentum in the conversation or topics to talk about? That was the exact aura that these two were projecting. They couldn’t really break the ice all too well in the early minutes after meeting up.

Sadly enough, after just a few moments, the pressure and lack of creativity to keep the talk going forced the conversation to plateau into dullness. Sadly the guy immediately whipped out his phone and scrolled away on Facebook to avoid an awkward moment while they waited for their order. The woman, void of any hope for the conversation, also retaliates by whipping out her phone to kill some time before they can both finally go home after a boring date. This narrative is not just one in a thousand, since it is a common sight to see nowadays.

I still can’t forget the face of frustration the girl had when this happened. It was pretty obvious that she was pissed, but something prevented her from doing something about it. If I was the lady, I would straight up call out my date for being so indifferent to my presence.

What made this story even sadder is that after an hour, they both left with blank faces, never to have laughed even once during their quick sunset outdoor meal. I assume they might have never hung out anymore due to that boring date experience.

Let’s take a moment to analyze it for a bit. In this scenario, the guy used his phone as an escape from a potentially awkward situation and caused a chain reaction that encouraged his date to do the same. Very pitiful indeed. When you think about it interpersonally, these two people actually took the time and effort to get well dressed and even drive to the restaurant just to see each other, yet their date was mostly wasted on a dull and boring conversation with no depth or substance. I really feel for the woman in this situation, because surely it isn’t easy to get well prepared for an expensive night out just to have your date go on and phub you.

Throughout my high school life, I’ve also had several dates where everything was going perfect, but the vibe would just start to decline the moment my date whips out her phone for non-essential reasons like checking social media updates, and friend’s messages. It just really kills the moment. I mean “hello? I’m right in front of you”. Obviously, choosing to prioritize your own meaningless distractions over the people with you was a clear sign of insensitivity, insecurity, shallowness, and neglectfulness, which is a clear red flag for even considering a relationship.

The situation is all too common at parties too. Out of all the parties I’ve been to, phubbing is always present in one way or another. During the early hours of the night, there would always be that one person staring down at his phone because he’s too shy to make conversation. Very pitiful if you ask me. The early hours of a party always usually offer you the highest amount of opportunities to get people excited and having fun, yet some people still choose to waste it on their meaningless distractions.

The scary thing about all of this is that I see phubbing and phubbers almost everywhere I go nowadays, and it’s like a lowkey zombie apocalypse.

Sadly, despite many people also sharing the same sentiment, many are afraid to speak out about this issue for fear of people calling them too “dramatic” or that phubbing is “not that big of a deal”.

The Decline of Family Communication At Mealtimes

Besides how phone usage ruins special moments like dates, it also contributes to degrading the way families talk at the dinner table.

Besides sharing meals together, the dinner table has another significant, yet undervalued social role: which is to allow the family and it’s members a common ground to freely communicate with each other. In modern culture, the concept of eating together at the same time and freely communicating has constantly been challenged by the numerous new distractions that we have at our fingertips. Instead of conversations that revolve around personal wellbeing, emotions, and stories throughout the day, conversations now always have to involve the smartphone in one way or another.

From all my years just exploring and roaming the city, I’ve observed the saddening fact that many children are on their phones while at the dinner table with their parents. This is a common sight for me when visiting other people’s homes and walking by restaurants. The kids are just spending way too much time on their mobile devices. Admit it or not, it all could have been prevented by good parenting, discipline and impulse control.

In the year 2018, psychologists from the Pew Research center have observed that allowing children to have unlimited access to the internet and mobile devices in the long term increases their risk for social issues such as lowered self-esteem, envy, comparison, frustration, and depression. In their statistics, about half of children wished that social media and smartphones were never even invented. This is just one in the hundreds (possibly thousands) of independent research that basically reassures the need to remove digital distractions from the family space. The dialogue on social media and its impacts to wellbeing will be further discussed in the coming chapters.

Before moving on, let’s take a pause and reflect on the bullet points below. You might be able to gain some valuable insight, whether you are a child or a parent of the family.

As a Parent in the family…

• Do I spoil my child too much?
• Do I discipline my child’s usage of modern technology?
• What measures am I taking to ensure my child does not grow up to be a smartphone-addicted sociopath in the future?
• Does my own technology usage get in the way of me spending time with my child?
• Do I acknowledge the activities my child has shown interest in such as sports, art, or music?
• How can I make more time for my children despite my busy work schedule?
• Do I ask my child how he/she is feeling, as well as affirm his/her emotions in a neutral way?
• How can I make mealtime conversations more meaningful?
• The moment I die, would I want to leave the world knowing I scrolled through Facebook instead of talking to my children at the dinner table?

As A Child in the family…

• Do I use my phone too much?
• What’s more important? my phone, or spending time with the people I love?
• Have I asked my family how they are doing yet?
• Have I expressed gratitude for the support and love of my family yet?

Phubbing Hurts Everybody

If you were a victim of phubbing, or are frustrated by the sight of people choosing their phones instead of talking to each other, people might convince you that you are being too “dramatic” or that it’s not that big of a deal. Others may even go as far as to tell you that you should just “let it go”, and affirm that it is a normal thing to do.

Little does the mainstream populus know how painful and frustrating being “phubbed” can be. Imagine making the effort to see someone you care about, just to be ignored in favor of something stupid like Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter.

Psychologists themselves consider the act of “phubbing” to be a form of social exclusion and can be really bad when you take into account the context. Imagine if two young parents paid little attention to their growing child, and spent most of their time on their phones instead of doing anything productive, creative, constructive, or fun as a family. Will they be setting their child up to become an attention-deficit psychopath in the future? Most likely yes.

You’re probably thinking that what I just said was an overstatement, but believe me, there are millions of people just roaming the world looking for something to fill the void of acknowledgment that they didn’t get from their parents, all because they chose to use their devices and waste away instead of making the most out of their precious time. I personally have friends who suffer the same dilemmas, and the fact that nobody is talking about the issue is simply mind-boggling.

Psychological Detriment

Psychologists from the University of Kent studied the effect on individuals of being phubbed in a one-to-one social situation. They found that increased phubbing significantly and negatively affected the way the person being phubbed felt about their interaction with the other person. Researchers Varoth Chotpitayasunondh and Professor Karen Douglas, of Kent’s School of Psychology, considered phubbing a specific form of social exclusion that threatens people’s fundamental human needs: belonging, self-esteem, meaningful existence, and control. Their study involved 153 participants who were asked to view an animation of two people having a conversation and imagine themselves as one of them. Each participant was assigned to one of three different situations: no phubbing, partial phubbing, or extensive phubbing. The results showed that, as the level of phubbing increased, people experienced greater threats to their fundamental needs. They also perceived the communication quality to be poorer, and the relationship to be less satisfying. The results also showed that phubbing affected the need to belong in particular, which explained the overall negative effects on social interaction.

The problem nowadays is that using phones at the dinner table or any other social setting for that matter, are constantly welcome and aren’t viewed as a form of disrespect to the people in front of you. The awful part about all this is that if you kindly ask someone to not use their phone when they’re with you at the table, you may come off as a conservative “boomer” with a “heavy distaste for technology”. Some may even outright call you “grandpa”. This whole trend is the fault of many millennials, and now we, Generation Z, have to suffer the annoying and frustrating consequences that incur severe detriment to the quality of our day-to-day social interactions.

What’s Preventing Us From Eradicating “Phubbing”

The reason why “using your phone when with other people” is an epidemic is due to the lack of social norms governing it.

Think about it this way: do people actually call others out for being disrespectful by using their phones when other people are communicating face to face? In this day and age, no right?

Back when smartphones and other mobile devices were not that mainstream, using them while with other people is heavily looked down upon and is considered straight-up rudeness. Back then, people would call you out for being a “phubber” and you would realize that having a habit like that would only ruin your interactions with other people, whilst making yourself look like an insensitive person. If you go out on a date and constantly use your phone, your partner would just straight up call you an asshole. In some Asian cultures, using a smartphone while at the dinner table with family means you get the big slipper smack at the back of your head.

Fast forward to today, and we are now living with generations of mentally fat people who no longer care about such norms, because they, themselves are guilty of using their phones to distract from interactions as well. As a universal whole, this causes severe detriment to the conversations and interactions people have on a day-to-day basis.

The Takeaway

The next time someone ignores you and turns to their phones, do not be afraid to call them out for their awful behavior. Every person has the right to be given attention, especially when face to face; meaning mobile device usage while with other people is a form of indifference and must be dealt with accordingly. Offering full attention and ears to the person you are spending time with is basic respect and human etiquette.

If you choose not to correct someone’s bad habits, the tendency is that they will keep on doing it, and cause trouble for other people they interact with in the future. Repeated negative interactions will just encourage more and more people to continue the act of phubbing. The mentality behind this is “If he was able to do it without negative feedback from others, then I can do it too.” This type of behavior will just perpetuate the cycle of degrading our social interactions.

We all can suppress phubbing as a community by creating an environment wherein people who are constantly on their phones are looked down upon for their rude and insensitive behaviors. This is the way it was before, and this is the way it should be if we still believe in the value of mutual respect.

When it comes to the motives behind phubbing, there is one thing that separates the losers from the winners in life; and it involves the way they deal with a bout of “social awkwardness”.

In hindsight, there is really no such thing as an awkward moment, as it all depends on the person’s choice to view it as such. Sadly, especially with the people in this generation, people immediately turn to their phones when there is nothing interesting to talk about, or they are feeling a sense of shyness, awkwardness, or boredom when with other people. Rather than listening to the first impulse and going for your phone as a distraction, why not go about the infinite number of ways you can reverse an awkward situation. Think of something fun; I know you can do it!

To add to this, being on your phone all the time will make you look like a mentally fat, socially awkward loser with no social skills or confidence whatsoever, which is an incredible unattractive trait. Again, this is also disrespectful to the people in front of you who have made the effort just to meet up. So, as a community, let us all work together and make dinner dates great again by eliminating the smartphone from the table.

Meanwhile, in a domestic setting with your family, instead of being insensitive, or just outright carefree, a little self-control can do wonders for your personal life. If you are a parent, exercising discipline in your child’s technology usage habits can do wonders for their mental health and personality development in the future. Just a reminder, character formation does not start in school; it starts at home, and if parents do not learn to discipline their children on the proper and correct usage of technology, they will grow up to be lame persons in the future who lack substance and the ability to form meaningful relationships with the people around them.

Undoubtedly, smartphones and social media are now necessary for us to go about our daily lives, but that doesn’t mean we need to be involved with them 24/7. We just need to learn to separate ourselves from technology when the time calls for meaningful moments with our loved ones and the important people in our lives.