There is nothing worse than feeling like the third wheel, especially when your friend’s mobile gets more attention than you. A new term has been coined for the antisocial behaviour, “phubbing” . Phubbing is the act of “subbing others in a social setting by checking your phone”.

And apparently the problem is reaching crisis levels Down Under. The ‘Stop Phubbing’ campaign has launched in Australia, with Alex Haigh, the creator of the campaign saying:

A group of friends and I were chatting when someone raised how annoying being ignored by people on mobiles was.

The website, created by Haigh can be utilised by companies to download materials such as posters that discourage the act of phubbing.

According to professor of psychology, Phil Reed, mobile phone addiction symptoms are displayed by many phubbers. Reed said:

The internet and social media are goof things up to a point but we have to control them. If you were talking to someone and someone else came up and you started talking to the other person without including the first person in your conversation that would be thought of as very rude.

A newspaper survey has revealed that 54% of people check Facebook, Twitter or other forms of social media daily while 16% stated that they checked more than 10 times a day. And research conducted by advertising agency, McCann showed that 37% of people think not answering a message is worse than if you were to ‘phub’ a friend.

[Thanks Pat]

[Source: The Daily Mail]