“I read for a living, and I fully confess that when I’m reading, I have to put my iPhone on the other side of the room. Otherwise, its presence always suggesting that something very interesting must be going on in my pocket. How does the phone truly operate in our minds?” Jonathan Haidt, from an interview with David Remnick in an article in New Yorker, “Jonathan Haidt Wants You to Take Away Your Kid’s Phones”
“Hi, my name is Jack, and I am a phubber.”
IStock Getty Images
What’s a phubber? Someone addicted to “phubbing, first coined as a word in 2012 by the McCann Group, an advertising firm in Australia as part of a “Stop Phubbing Campaign.” Unfortunately for most of us, it was ignored. “Phubbing” is a combination of “phone” and “snubbing.” The miserable practice of ignoring the one you’re with for the omnipresence of those you are not with but remotely connect with our smartphones. “You are not enough to keep my attention; I’ve got to check this text, respond to this compelling ping. This addictive Facebook or Instagram or TikTok post is beckoning to direct me to something to indoctrinate or sell me or just suck my time. No excuse. Just checking out.”
“And if you can’t be with the one you love, honey,
Love the one you’re with…” Stephen Stills, “Love the One You’re With,”
Crosby, Stills, and Nash
Of course, I don’t want to be in a Phubber’s Anonymous group, or suffer an intervention, or invite a sponsor to hold me accountable. I’m perfectly content to feed my addiction. Except I’m not. It makes me lonely, vaguely dissatisfied, restless, alienated when I find myself scrolling Instagram pictures or YouTube short sports videos or a Facebook feed. Or accumulated texts and emails from a dozen subscription sources. At least it’s not TikTok accumulating my interests and data to the CCP. Forfeit is a quick hour of my increasingly finite time as it slips by like a bucket full of water with a hole in it. Irretrievably gone. Put the thing away, will ya? All the algorithms conspire to be ingeniously addictive. You know it’s not good for you, right? We can feel it in our bones like tumors or osteoporosis. But when the urge starts up, and the thing beckons, we go there.
Need to do something. I’m admitting I’m addicted. I’ve done an inventory and come up short. I’m not sure what the program believes the formless ‘higher power’ to be, but I know what God means to me, and I can pray about this and ask for help. I have started down the path to better mental health, but I expect the claws to keep trying to pull me back.
“From 2003 to 2022, American adults reduced their average hours of face-to-face socializing by about 30 percent. For unmarried Americans, the decline was even bigger—more than 35 percent. For teenagers, it was more than 45 percent.” Derek Thompson, “Why Americans Stopped Hanging Out – And Why It Matters.” From ‘The Ringer’ podcast.
Anxiety, suicidal ideation, depression, loneliness, and alienation have been on the rise for years and are frequently written about, especially with the young – documented unprecedented levels requiring treatment. In this new era of instant connectedness, we are becoming more unconnected than ever before. But we persist in our ill-conceived faith that technology will solve our problems and cure our ills.
Recently a new bot was introduced from the AI platform Digi – an AI companion in an X post in December. Twenty-three million views. Click the link of the Pixar female image below and see what you think of the sample in the X, formerly-known-as-Twitter, post. The solution to human loneliness in a lonely time? A Disney quality animation bot. Just in time. The Pixar female image is reassuring as she promises that I am the most interesting person she’s ever met. So happy someone finally thinks so.
Our faith in our devices and connecting to the greater world informs us that everyone must benefit from the computer in our pocket and a satellite hookup to all the knowledge in the world. The prevailing narrative is we are liberating humankind with this technology. A story last week might give us pause as to how prepared most human beings are for the benefits.
The story was circulating in various news agencies about colonizing with the universal blessings of the computer in our pockets. Elon Musk is one such evangelist for salvation through technology. Last September a major donor hooked up a remote Amazon tribe to Musk’s Starlink network of 6,000 satellites. The donor has hopes to enable 150 remote tribes to do the same. They will all have phones in their pockets too. If they have pockets.
The 2,000 member Marubo tribe, who live along the Ituí River, are already hooked up and tuned in. Access to the world. And the world’s ways. The chief says his youth, especially the boys, are not only hooked up, but hooked. On phone time. On porn. On violent video games. Learning from the Western ways, the boys have become much more sexually aggressive and experimenting with the kinky stuff they had never conceived of before.
Some quotes from the interviews in the NY Times article that spawned the internet conversation: “When it arrived, everyone was happy,” Tsainama Marubo, 73, told The New York Times. “But now, things have gotten worse. Young people have gotten lazy because of the internet, they’re learning the ways of the white people.”
“Everyone is so connected that sometimes they don’t even talk to their own family.”
“It changed the routine so much that it was detrimental.”
“In the village, if you don’t hunt, fish and plant, you don’t eat. Some young people maintain our traditions,” TamaSay Marubo, 42, added. “Others just want to spend the whole afternoon on their phones.”
It appears that I am not alone as a phubber, and the addiction is ready to rewire any of us without regard to where we live, who our tribe is, or what else we should be doing. The unreality of screen connectedness beckons insistently to us all.
“If one thinks that existence itself has no ultimate ground of intrinsic meaning or value, if reality is not perceived as good in itself outside of one’s own manipulation of it, nothing can be truly celebrated, even if one energetically pursues temporary diversions and pleasures.” Dr. Daria Spezzano, “Thomas Aquinas, The Nones, and the Dones,” The New Ressourcement, Vol 1, No 1, Spring 2024. After the thoughts of Josef Peiper “In Tune With the World,” 1999, South Bend, IN
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