PLANNING TO AVOID PHUBBERY

I learned a new word today: phubbing.

This little shipped-together transitive verb, to 'phub' is what happens when the word 'phone' and 'snub' collide in a kind of portmanteau train-crash. You can hear the buffers thud together: phub, phub, phub...

It's the act of ignoring someone while they're talking to you because you're looking at your phone.

Yep, you and I live in a world where there's now a word, a unique word, for that exact thing.

I hope I don't do that.

Now that I've got my iPhone back, I've been thinking about ways I can be less dependent on having it with me. As I queued up in the Apple Store to collect it, I found my fingers automatically reaching for my pocket, reaching for a phone which quite obviously wasn't there.

I stood there, behind two gigantic rucksacks in the queue for an Apple Genius. Everybody had their head down and their fingers twitching across glimmering screens. It suddenly seemed quite a sorry sight - lots of people, all gathered together, none of them caring at all about the fact they were both the phubbers and the phubbed.

It's fixed by the way, my iPhone 5s - as clear and as shiny as ever it was.

So, I've reached what I think will be a decisive moment. I think it's time to restart 'Screen Free Saturdays'. Yup, Screen Free Saturdays - from Midnight to Midnight, no square-eyed LCD displays for me, no possibility of phubbing anybody - just good old cotton-bound books and some fresh air, incommunicado.

According to some scientists in a journal called Computers in Human Behavior, the 'ubiquitous nature of cell phones makes phubbing... a near inevitable occurrence.'

They cite some common behaviours which are familiar but are also lethal to good, healthy relationships:

• Checking your phone during dinner
• Angling your phone where you can see it when together with your partner
• Keeping your phone in your hand during an important conversation
• Pulling your phone out whenever it beeps or rings, even in the middle of something serious

The study goes on to make the extraordinary suggestion that there's a correlation between phubbing and depression. In other words, the more you perceive yourself to be phubbed, the more it leads to relational conflict, insecurity, tension, low satisfaction, and low self-esteem.

Yep, you and I live in a world where that's a thing.

Give me a Saturday night on a glassy lake under a starlit sky, a little wooden rowing boat, a blanket and a gas-powered lantern, I thought to myself as I read through the article.

Though how I'd blog about it, I haven't quite figured out.