Number’s up for phubbers

Campaign to stop phone snubbing goes global

IT is one of the great bugbears of modern living: people checking e-mails and replying to texts while ignoring the friends they are with. But now an international campaign has declared war on the practice, known as “phubbing” — phone snubbing.

The Stop Phubbing campaign began in Australia and has now spread to Britain and the US— two of the countries most affected by the phenomenon.

The campaign has produced posters warning customers not to phub that will be displayed by businesses, and place cards designed to be laid out at weddings as a reminder not to text during the celebrations.

Alex Haigh, 23, from Melbourne, who is leading the campaign, told the Sunday Times: “A group of friends and I were chatting when someone raised how annoying being ignored by people on mobiles was.

“It’s the people who do it all the time that we are targeting. It’s a paradox: you disconnect with those around you in favour of those pretty much anywhere else, which often infuriates your friends unless they’re phubbing too, in which case you may as well have stayed at home,” he said.

Haigh said he supported people who took a stand against phubbers, such as the Sainsbury’s checkout assistant in London who last month refused to serve a shopper who was using her cellphone.

The campaign comes as a YouGov poll found that 44% of people in Britain spend more than half an hour a day looking at their phones. About a third of those polled admitted that they would answer their phone in the middle of a conversation.

More than half checked social networking sites such as Facebook or Twitter every day and 16% checked more than 10 times a day.

Phil Reed, professor of psychology at Swansea University and an expert in internet addiction disorder, said many phubbers showed signs of addiction, such as withdrawal, if they were denied constant access to their phones.

He compared the phubbing phenomenon to starting a conversation with one person and then ignoring them as soon as someone else joined in. “We call it a social connection, but it’s not,” he said.

Further research by McCann, the advertising firm that carried out the research, found that 37% of young people believe that not answering a message is a far graver faux pas than phubbing friends. However, phubbers’ behaviour may be explained by the fact that most people do not realise they are doing it.

Rodney Collins, regional director of McCann, said: “People do not appreciate the influence mobiles have on them.”— © The Daily Telegraph, London

You disconnect with those around you in favour of those pretty much anywhere else