Have you been 'phubbed'? Or are you doing the 'phubbing'?
'Phubbing'-i.e. snubbing someone for your phone- is the new phenomenon causing marital discord.
Turkish scientists surveyed over 700 married people about their communication skills and found that persons who felt like they were being 'phubbed' reported feeling less intimacy and more conflict.
We've all been there. You're busy looking at funny videos on Tiktok instead of speaking to the person lying in bed next to you. According to Yahoo UK almost three quarters of us keep our phones in our bedrooms at night; but is a five minute scroll really that harmful?
Apparently so. According to Hilda Burke, psychotherapist and author of "The Phone Addiction Workbook", our brain signals can slowly change to prioritise our phone over real life conversations. Burke told Yahoo news that our attention takes two forms-executive and alarming. "Executive is say, sharing information with you, but if an alarm went off my brain would prioritise that-that is our DNA," she says. "Our brain will prioritise an alarm or crying baby, our survival depends on it."
When a message alert or Instagram notification goes off, our brain is prioritising an alarm that isn't actually important. "Our brain goes into alarm mode even if something is not important and our survival does not depend on it," Dr Burke says.
While it may be difficult, Burke suggests creating boundaries to prevent 'phubbing' in a relationship. "It's really important to practice putting our phone away when we're with a loved one," she told Yahoo. "To put it on silent, switch it off, (or) put it out of sight."
