Phubbing: A social disease

JERRY FABYANIC

fortable silence generally ends relatively quickly.

Phubbing moves the concept of elevator discomfort to a stratospheric level. It is in a league of its own and has disturbing implications for the loneliness pandemic, which can lead to antisocial behavior among the young and the old alike. Because among our survival needs, human companionship and communication is as vital as food, clothing and shelter.

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the teen years, young people transition from childhood dependency to adulthood self-reliance. is time is so critical that since the days when we roamed the African savanna and hunkered in caves, cultures have developed rituals to help move the young through their coming-of-age years. ey have done so to help their soon-to-be men and women become e ective members of the community. Unfortunately, over the past few millennia, such rituals have pretty much become the domain of religions (e.g., con rmation in Catholicism and Bar and Bat Mitzvah in Judaism) and educational institutions with their proms and graduation ceremonies.

underway. Phubbing short-circuits that process, which means the mental health of the individual is compromised. And that impacts their ability to function e ectively in their personal lives.

Phubbing, when practiced by tweens and teens, has major implications for their future professional and civic roles. And that in turn has immense rami cations for our entire society. Growing societal ssures are threatening our democratic processes. If they continue to widen, we will be in danger of becoming socially and thus politically dysfunctional. And if that happens, we can kiss o the American experiment.

In his play “ e Devil’s Disciple,” the playwright George Bernard Shaw wrote, “ e worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indi erent to them: at’s the essence of inhumanity.” Note Shaw’s use of negative expression with the words indi erence and inhumanity and how they correlate. Flip the words to positive expression: acknowledging others is humane. So when you’re strolling down the street or through a store with your phone plugged into your ear and you are chatting away, you are evincing a callous indi erence to everyone around you.

Feeling you’re being treated indi erently can exacerbate feelings of loneliness and lead to worse: depression, suicide and antisocial behavior.

Phubbing sows the seeds of antisocial behavior at an early age. During

I’m not sure, however, if phubbing completely captures what is happening. Snubbing is an intentional act of disrespect. Showing deliberate disdain for another might be happening in certain phubbing cases, but the reason many—especially teens and young adults—bury theirnoses in their phones is insecurity and poor social skills. When that is the case, it would be better to consider phubbing a symptom rather than a disease.

A key purpose of providing positive coming-of-age experiences for pre-adults is to foster healthy interpersonal relationship development. It is essential to their wellbeing. One of the ironies of teaching tweens and teens is that while the incessant chatter could drive a teacher batty, it is an indicator of healthy growth, assuming the chatter is appropriate and task oriented when the lesson is

We have survived the Civil War, the Great Depression, the Cold War, social upheavals and many other crises. And we are confronted with other existential crises, the per dious threat to our democracyand climate change being at the forefront. But I wonder if phubbing might be the most insidious and potentially destructive crisis of all, one that no miracle vaccine or social program would be able to halt. e reason is a successful democracy is totally dependent on a healthy, respectful exchange of ideas among an informed,fact-based citizenry. And phubbing helps sabotage that. For as George Bernard Shaw points out, hate is bad enough, but callous indi erence to others is quite another.

Jerry Fabyanic is the author of “Sisyphus Wins” and “Food for ought: Essays on Mind and Spirit.” He lives in Georgetown.