PHUBBING
Hello everyone, this is Hatice! Welcome to the Sesli Fikirler Podcast. You can also name it Voice of Ideas.
I want you to imagine an empty room but only a person and your phone. But there is absolutely nothing else. What would you do? Would you interact with the person or would you just pick up your phone and pretend as if there is nobody else near you?
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Well, there are two types of people in this regard. The first one is phubbers and the other one has no label. Though I do not want to label anyone, there is an urge in people to name everything to be able to communicate and this time it is phubbing. If you are not familiar with this word, then it’s totally fine becasue it is comparably new. It is a combination of two words “phone” and “snubbing”. I think you can now grasp the meaning better right? The researchers say that if you are scrolling through the screen of your phone all the time when there are people around you, then you are probably a phubber. No one can deny the fact that mankind has developed the technology so fast that we cannot live without it anymore, even we cannot bear to sit on chair without using our hands. We constantly check our phones even if do not have a notification. It has become very tough just to sit or stand by and look at the things nearby. We have an inner impulse to check and see what is going on on the social media, how many people liked our post, what they have commented, or just scrolling through our screen. But do you know why we do that?
It is because we become more addicted to our phoned than ever before. I will tell you about a documentary film that I’ve watched recently. There are specialists who have quit their jobs from very influenced companies like Google for example. An one of them says that he could not take himself checking his e-mails all the time. And some day he decided to make a change about it and prepared a presentation about how their notification system makes people addictive and sent it through e-mail to everyone working in the company, like literally everone including higher administiration and CEO. Then he woke up and went to the company as usual. But he was anxious about the reaction he would take. But the outcome was shocking, everyone agreed with him, and told him that they had the same impulse. But what was more shocking was that nobody took a precaution as to diminish this stimulation, despite the fact that he came up with a very proficient idea to make people’s mind relieve. And when saw this, he quit from his job because he found out that this was their company’s turning wheel, they actually want people get addicted to keep on running the company itself. People were only agents, objects like a machine for them he says. And the other person says that they created a whole system based on the people’s touch on their screens even how much time they look at a photo or a video and they used this info to release similar photo and videos to make them continue to use the social media.
It is undeniable that we live in a consuming age. But we are the ones consumed, yet everybody thinks vice versa. We go to the market and buy some grocery, and this process is making us consumers. But what about our energy, our mental health, physical health which are consumed by our phones and technology. I do not claim that we shooul keep away from any kind of techs no, but I say those big companies need to do something about it. They need to go for a change about their working policies. Because phones are in our lives forever now, and the next generations are literally born into this new system and to keep them healthier we can start little amendments at our homes and this one move can grow bigger.
See you on the next episode and remember to follow me on Instagram Hatice Akgöz Kara.
