Defining Terms and Selecting Metaphors to Understand Technology in the Classroom: A Semantical Discussion

Classroom Phubbing

Smartphones and other mobile technologies have become a ubiquitous feature of the modern era. The past decade has seen the number of internet-connected devices surge past the number of humans on earth, and industry projections suggest continued rapid growth in the adoption of smartphones among consumers (“Cisco Visual Networking Index,” 2017). As these devices have permeated society, researchers and cultural commentators alike have struggled to understand what effects they may have upon the individuals who use them and society as a whole. Recent research has begun to coalesce around the term “phubbing,” a portmanteau of the words “phone” and “snubbing” which describes the snubbing of someone else with one’s phone. This chapter posits that phubbing is perhaps the most significant construct intersecting technology and the college classroom setting. Researchers have found that college students utilize technology to high degrees (Wang et al., 2015), and instructors are already struggling to implement efforts to curtail the usage of technology in their classrooms (Tatum et al., 2018). Before fully considering what salience phubbing may have to the classroom, the word itself must be clarified and redefined.