Would you mind paying attention to me? Phubbing in adolescence as an Educational challenge in digital and face to face coexistence

Abstract

Introduction: Social relationships occur simultaneously between the face-to-face and virtual environment and with greater intensity in post-pandemic times. With the use of the Internet, new behaviors such as phubbing have emerged, which decrease the quality of relationships and coexistence, the impact of which has hardly been studied in adolescence. Methods: The objective of this study is to know the incidence and impact of this new behavior in 379 adolescents from 8 Secondary Education centers in Aragon, as well as to analyze whether its normalization neutralizes its negative effect using a descriptive analysis including the ANOVA test and chi square tests. Results: The results show that phubbing is a frequent phenomenon among adolescents, reaching higher levels of phubber (who exercises phubbing) and phubbee (who receives it) in girls, with the most negative effects affecting them (feeling of exclusion), a fact that it also increases with age. In addition, frequent phubbing does not reduce feeling negatively affected by the fact that such behavior is normalized among adolescents. Discussion: This study offers the first insights into the impact of phubbing on emotional and relational health in the life of adolescent students according to age and gender. Our findings reveal an important novelty about this phenomenon, some first evidence that the normalization of this behavior does not eliminate the negative effects on the quality of personal relationships and broadens the knowledge about phubbing.